DOS box, scheduled tasks, PHP script

Have a 'monitoring' PHP command line script timed to run hourly. Controlled by the new?IE5.5 Scheduled Tasks facility (as listed in Windows Explorer - not quite the same as AT (which is what I have used previously) ) Script is kicked off by a batch file. Batch file is object in scheduled tasks entry. When it fires, a DOS box opens, the batch file is executed, PHP kicks in; and upon completion, breaks down in the reverse sequence. Works perfectly but... How can one achieve this in the background - without popping up a DOS box over the top of whatever else is happening? (and annoying the socks off an admin killing a printer/adding new users, etc) Please advise, =dn WinNT4.0 SP6a, IE5.5 SP2, PHP vn 4.0.6, Apache vn 1.3.20WinNT, MySQL vn 3.23.40-nt