Crash Recovery & Circuit Breaker

Auto-Restart

When Auto-Restart is enabled for a service, WinWraper automatically restarts it the moment it stops unexpectedly (crashes).

You don't need to do anything, WinWraper handles it completely.

Enabling Auto-Restart

In the Service List, find the Auto-Restart column on the service's row and click the toggle to turn it on. There's no separate dialog, the change applies immediately.

💡Tip

Enable Auto-Restart for all production services to ensure they stay running, even when an unexpected error occurs.

Rapid Exit Detection

If a service exits too quickly right after starting (typically within the first few seconds), WinWraper detects this as a configuration error or missing dependency, not a regular crash.

WinWraper will:

Stop restarting immediately.
Show a warning dialog with the service's error output (stderr).

Common causes:

Incorrect path to the executable
Missing libraries or dependencies
Syntax error in the script

Circuit Breaker

The Circuit Breaker is a protection mechanism: if a service crashes too many times within a short time window, WinWraper breaks the restart loop and sets the status to ⛔ Circuit Open.

AUTOPLAY DEMOCrash lifecycle → auto-restart → Circuit Open

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Timeline

Why do we need a Circuit Breaker?

Without it, a continuously failing service would:

Waste CPU and RAM needlessly
Write enormous log files
Obscure the real problem that needs fixing

The Circuit Breaker stops the loop and alerts you, rather than restarting indefinitely.

When does the Circuit Breaker trip?

The service crashes 5 times (default) within 60 seconds.
After the 5th crash, the status changes to ⛔ Circuit Open.
The threshold can be adjusted in the advanced settings (see Settings & Configuration).

How to reset the Circuit Breaker

Find and fix the root cause (check the log in Service Watcher).
Right-click the service → Restart.
The service starts normally and the circuit is reset.

⚠️Warning

Don't just restart without fixing the root cause, the Circuit Breaker will trip again immediately.

Tracking crash counts

In the Service List, the Crashes column shows:

Crashes in the current run / Total lifetime crashes

For example: 2/15 means it has crashed 2 times in this run, and 15 times in total since it was added.

Finding the crash cause

When a service crashes, error details are recorded in the Service Watcher. See: Service Watcher

Next: Resource Metrics →