A better way to hide the DF client is to use Jeff Gilchrist's DFGui. It has a radio button option to hide or show the client, along with other neat stuff.
As for shutting down automatically , what OS are you using? Sounds like you may be running w98, but you also said you installed hideDF "as a service" ? If you are running some flavor of NT, you could just install DF as a service to solve both of those problems at once.