executing programs with php

Hi folks,
I'm desperately trying to get an external program (i.e. Notepad for test use) running.
I'm using PHP3 and Apache under WinNT.
Everything I tried failed:

system ("notepad.exe");
or
exec ("notepad.exe");
or
popen("notepad.exe", "w");
or
echo `notepad.exe`;

Each time a new process "NOTEPAD.EXE" has been created, but it's only visible within the task-manager without the possibility to kill it.
The PHP-script seems to be still active for a long, long time.

Any helpful ideas are very welcome. Thanx.

Well, you're trying to run a windows program from a language that wasn't intended for the desktop. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but it's probably something about running in a non-console mode that can't open a new window.

The question is "Why try executing a windows program from a webserver?" Try executing a command-line program, or, better yet, create a small batch file that does something file-based, like write some text into a file or something. Or for example starting or stopping a WinNT service: "net stop Spooler" or "net start Spooler".

Hi rycamor,
thanx a lot for your ideas. The problem I had(!) was much more complex as just starting notepad.
The thing I'm doing is to invoke via PHP a CORBA-Client on the webserver which is accessing the appropriate CORBA-Server somewhere within the network.
The problems were:
(1) My webserver (Apache) was running with wrong permissions
(2) The client forgot all environment variables when it was invoked by PHP/Apache

#2 is really a silly thing. I set up a few variables in the client-code and yeahhh, it works!