I ran into a similar issue a couple of months back, the solution on Windows is to run it as a service. It is very simple, you need Mark Hammond's Win32 extensions. For path you have to use absolute filepath for all local files and for network drive use the UNC path i.e. \\servername\folder-filename\ . All these steps will let your machine running the program survive logouts after a login. If your machine is part of windows network and there is domain login then in order for it to work after a machine restart you need to goto the Service panel (in Control Panel) find the Python service you registered, right-click and goto its properties, goto the "Log On" panel, select a domain user for "This account" by clicking the Browse button, note the selected user has access to windows domain and admin access to that particular machine. Enter user network password, hit Apply, OK and there u go. All this requires admin access to machine. You can configure a couple of things about the service in the Services panel.
The code itself is simple: #------------------------------------------------------------------ import win32service, win32serviceutil class MyService(win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework): """NT Service.""" _svc_name_ = "MyServiceName" _svc_display_name_ = "A Little More Descriptive" def SvcDoRun(self): #do your stuff here, call your main application code. def SvcStop(self): #the following line is not really needed, basically put here any code that should execute #before the service stops self.ReportServiceStatus(win32service.SERVICE_STOP_PENDING) if __name__ == '__main__': win32serviceutil.HandleCommandLine(MyService) #------------------------------------------------------------------ After this if you have python in your path and Win32 extensions installed, goto command prompt and run: c:\> MyService.py -startup=auto install Trying to have your service have Network access after a machine restart is a bit tricky. This thing works but somehow I feel there is more to it. If anyone has a better way, please post. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list