Dnscrypt-proxy starts then stops on reboots - internet access cut off

[glnz]

My PC is Win 7 Pro 64-bit with 16GB RAM. We have Verizon FIOS 1Gbps at home, so the setup is all pretty good.

A few months ago, I installed Simple DNSCrypt 64-bit on my Win 7 machine, which in turn installed the dnscrypt-proxy process and service on the machine. This encrypts all DNS lookups so my ISP cannot see where I go on the web, and I set it to connect to Cloudflare's new 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver, which is highly secure and doesn't keep logs. It's a great combination of services - see the stupendous article How to keep your ISP’s nose out of your browser history with encrypted DNS | Ars Technica .

Starting just a little while ago, on reboots, my internet connection got spotty and then started to die. Not all reboots, but maybe half. I figured out today that the the dnscrypt-proxy process and service are starting on reboots but then something is terminating them pretty quickly as booting continues. When they terminate, my PC cannot connect to the internet.

I've tried a number of things, but the only solution I found today was to change the dnscrypt-proxy service's start to "Automatic (Delayed Start)", which works but causes every reboot to take longer.

This link will take you to an xls with my entire Autoruns list of startup items: < THIS LINK > (Rows with strikeout text are DISABLED and do not start.) Do you see anything that would cause the dnscrypt-proxy process and service to terminate?

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[glnz]

To add to my query above -

How would I do a .bat file to run on reboot-startup that would query whether the dnscrypt-proxy service is running, and, if not, start it, and this bat file would stay active and re-check for, say, 15 minutes so it would re-start the dnscrypt-proxy service ONLY when it was turned off.

Thanks.

 

[glnz]

UPDATE - PROGRESS - Oct 14 2018



I have done the following:



1) I have written this .bat file and saved it to my desktop - and you will see that the last line is the important one:



echo. >> "C:\Users\[MyUserName]\Desktop\start-dnscrypt-results.txt"

echo ---------- >> "C:\Users\[MyUserName]\Desktop\start-dnscrypt-results.txt"

echo. >> "C:\Users\[MyUserName]\Desktop\start-dnscrypt-results.txt"

echo %DATE% %TIME% >> "C:\Users\[MyUserName]\Desktop\start-dnscrypt-results.txt"

sc start dnscrypt-proxy >> "C:\Users\[MyUserName]\Desktop\start-dnscrypt-results.txt"



2) I have gone into Task Scheduler and scheduled the above batch file to run on Startup, with a delay of 30 seconds, and with Highest Privileges. (I had to use Task Scheduler with Highest Privileges because I could NOT get my bat file to run as Administrator otherwise - if I run it any other way, I must manually run it "as Administrator" and click Yes on the UAC prompt.)



3) I configured the Properties of the service dnscrypt-proxy to retry to start three times.



4) I also needed to change that service to start as "Automatic" and not "Automatic (Delayed Start)".



Well, it is working.



When I reboot, I can see either that the service is starting and staying on, in which case the .bat file leaves an error message in the results file,
or that the service starts and then stops and then starts again, with success codes in the results file.



What do you think?



By the way, the results file looks like this --

[SC] StartService FAILED 1056:

An instance of the service is already running.

Sat 10/13/2018 18:32:52.80 [SC] StartService FAILED 1056:

An instance of the service is already running.

Sat 10/13/2018 18:35:04.10 [SC] StartService FAILED 1056:

An instance of the service is already running.

Sat 10/13/2018 19:11:52.22

SERVICE_NAME: dnscrypt-proxy TYPE : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
STATE : 2 START_PENDING (NOT_STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN) WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) CHECKPOINT : 0x0 WAIT_HINT : 0x7d0 PID : 3532 FLAGS :

Sat 10/13/2018 20:52:48.19 [SC] StartService FAILED 1056:

An instance of the service is already running.

Sun 10/14/2018 7:17:51.31

SERVICE_NAME: dnscrypt-proxy TYPE : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
STATE : 2 START_PENDING (NOT_STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN) WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) CHECKPOINT : 0x0 WAIT_HINT : 0x0 PID : 2592 FLAGS :
---------- Sun 10/14/2018 9:27:55.70 [SC] StartService: OpenService FAILED 5:

Access is denied.



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