using exec on WIMP

Hi, may be someone can help me: I want to use the exec() function to run an executable as background process. This means my php script should not wait for the end of the background process. I tried a lot but without success. My script always wait for the end of the background process. My php script contains this line: exec(getenv("COMSPEC").' /c c:\mysql\bin\mysql.exe < E:/Inetpub/wwwroot/update/load_logs.sql > E:/Inetpub/wwwroot/update/load_logs.log'); Regarding to the online documentation on php.net all screen output is redirected to the file "load_logs.log". When I type in this string via command line the execution is successful. As I learned from the online documentation on php.net is that on LINUX systems something like "2>1&" or ">/dev/null" will help - but not on Windows. Any ideas ? regards, Markus Weber