I may be kicking a dead horse by posting yet another opinion, but I want to say that you can avoid the need to open a command prompt and also avoid having to edit the batch file by simply setting the target of a Windows shortcut to: "C:\Uniform Server\Server_Start.bat" w mysql Of course you must modify this to conform to the actual location of the Uniform Server on your own machine. Sometimes I like to have the Uniform Server go directly to the website I am developing rather than having it display the apanel. This is especially nice when showing off your work to a customer or to colleages. I accomplish this by changing the file: "C:\Uniform Server\diskw\home\admin\www\redirect.html" There is a javascript script element in this file containing a window.setInterval() call that you can change to reference your home page. For example: window.setInterval("window.location = 'http://localhost/mycoolsite/'", 500); Of course you should safely preserve the original so you can revert to displaying the apanel since that is the best approach for general development use. Finally. an experiment that I have not tried yet is to make the redirect.html modification above and then put the whole thing onto a CD-ROM with an autorun that will launch the server with the correct SQL enabled command line.