exec()

Hi, I am new here. I am working on my first real PHP project. I use Ora's Website 2.5.8, php 4.04 Win cgi mode, NT4. I have a prog to send email to many users. If I invoke this from a PHP4 script, php waits for the mail program to finish before it continues. This can be quite a long time. I saw the note about redirecting output in the php help. When I try this in Delphi, I get an I/O error and I have no way to tell if it is actually redirecting anything or not. I have solved the problem by having php start a little program which, in turn, starts the bigger prog to send email. This works, php only waits during the short time my little prog takes to invoke the big prog. But, it's hokey. Is there a way to tell php to "exec and continue" ?. I know it is easy in Unix, but Win is different. Maybe it should be a special php4win Win command. Thanks, Barry.