Startup as a Windows service

If Caching Proxy is installed as a Windows service, it is started like any other Windows service:

  1. Click Start -> Settings (for Windows 2000) -> Control Panel.
  2. In the Control Panel window, double-click Administrative Tools -> Services.
  3. In the Services window, highlight Caching Proxy.
  4. Click Start to initiate the Caching Proxy service.

If Caching Proxy is installed as a service, it can be configured to start up automatically when Windows starts. In that case, you do not have to log on before the proxy can serve requests. To have your proxy start automatically:

  1. Click Start -> Settings (for Windows 2000) -> Control Panel.
  2. In the Control Panel window, double-click Administrative Tools -> Services.
  3. In the Services window, highlight Caching Proxy.
  4. Click the Automatic radio button, then click Start to initiate the Caching Proxy service automatically when Windows starts.

Refreshing the PATH environment variable

If Caching Proxy is marked as Started in the Services window, but the proxy is not working, the machine might not have been restarted after the proxy was installed. If the Caching Proxy service is set to interact with the desktop, failure to restart can also cause the following error message to appear in a pop-up box: Message catalog error: the message catalog could not be loaded or is invalid

The machine must be restarted so that the value of the PATH environment variable is refreshed in the Windows registry. If the registry is not refreshed, it is possible for the PATH variable to show the correct Caching Proxy and GSK7 paths but to function incorrectly.

Note:
A potential conflict exists for Windows systems when both Caching Proxy and another application, such as a network file system, run as services. Caching Proxy sometimes cannot interpret a path containing a remote drive owned by a file system application that also is running as a service.

The problem can occur if the path for the file system service appears before the path for the Caching Proxy service in the Windows PATH environment variable. Altering the PATH variable to put file system services near the end of the setting can solve this problem.

This problem does not affect remote drives controlled by applications that do not run as Windows services. For example, Caching Proxy can access shared drives on other Windows machines that are visible through a local area network (LAN).