RS Linx ?

Does anyone know the diferance between the srvice mode and the regular mode on RS Linx. I was just wondering.

Basically, the "Service" mode starts and runs RSLinx each time your computer is started, even if there are no nodes connected. This can create some problems, if RSLinx ties up communications ports that are needed by other equipment.

The regular mode allows you to start and stop RSLinx as needed.

Select DDE > Options or View > Options to display the Options dialog box which contains the General, DDE, and Services tabs.
"Services" gives the option of starting RSLinx Services each time your system is started.

An important point about running Linx as a service, is that the data server is always available and running, even if nobody is logged in to the computer.

Manual (non-service) mode will cause linx to shut down whenever a user logs out.

Thanks for the reply, It cleared things up for me!!!!

Be careful running it as a service if you are running a lot of other comms type software. I canned running it as a service because it locked up my serial port and stopped othet PLC software from communicating.

This has been discussed here many times.

I've also seen cases where OPC Client applications that run as a Windows service need RSLinx to run as a service to communicate (COM/DCOM security permissions, I think) and cases where clients running as a normal Windows application need RSLinx to run as an application.

In most cases you'd run RSLinx as a service to not think about it or as an application if the service is causing problems (Like Bob mentioned)