I'm just barely getting into programming so I do apologize for my ignorance. I'm trying to create a .bat file that will check if a service is running on XP Pro. If service is running it will exit 0. If the service is stopped start service wait 10 seconds (via ping i'm guessing) check if service is running if service is running exit 0 if service is stopped start service wait 10 seconds Do this check a total of 3 times. if service does not come up within that time: exit 2 Exit 0 = ok exit 1 = warning exit 3 = critical (and this will alert) I need to do this for 3 different services but i'm expecting that it would be better to create one per service. That way you get notified on the specific service that is not coming back up. The goal is that if the service stops it will start it. If after 30 seconds it is unable to start the service then it will send an alert. The reason I'm trying to do it with a .bat is this is consistent with all other scripts and I did not want to complicate it further by adding different kinds of code. Yay for consistency! Again I do apologize for my ignorance I've been thrown into this project last minute. Thank you for the help and reading my question!