Re-open Putty Config on Connection Close
When a connection is ended or fails (notice the "inactive" in the title bar), a new menu option appears in the window menu "Restart Session". This will reconnect the session.
Another workaround, as there is still no real solution:
- For your connection, in the Session window, configure "Close window on exit > Never"
- In the session window, select from the menu the "New session..." menu item. This will bring back main window of putty
KiTTY is a forked version of PuTTY with more features, and it will let you keep the config window open at all times. It has the standard "Open" button that will launch a session and close the config, and also a "Start" button that will launch a session while keeping the config window open.
It also has the ability to automatically reconnect on disconnects. (Config > Connection > Reconnect Options > "Attempt to reconnect on connection failure").
You can change the delay for reconnect attempts in the kitty.ini file if you're using the portable version. For example ReconnectDelay=10 for a 10 second delay before attempting to reconnect. (By default the ini file has the line #ReconnectDelay=5, make sure to delete the # character from the beginning of the line for it to actually apply your changes.)
http://kitty.9bis.net/ (free / open source)
There are also a lot of other forks and alternatives that offer tabbed sessions, and an always-open session list on the side, if quick-opening of sessions is what you're looking for:
(MobaXterm, MTPuTTY, SuperPuTTY, etc).
And there are more with other features:
(ExtraPuTTY has a slightly different auto-reconnect & optional scripting with Lua, RuTTY has basic scripting--also included in KiTTY, MobaXterm and ConEmu can open tabs with other sessions like Windows Command prompt / cmd, Bitvise SSH Client has a nice interface, etc)
I was messing around with MobaXterm some more and it has a nice way to reconnect, you just press R. I can semi-automate it with the built-in macro tools too. And the MultiExec feature is cool cuz if I have multiple PuTTY tabs open, I can send commands to all of them at the same time (including restarting the session).
It seems to have a hard time saving session settings though. I often have to manually pick the COM port when I launch a saved session, unless the COM port is already active before I open MobaXterm (and the setting hasn't been lost already).