diff --git a/CONTRIBUTORS b/CONTRIBUTORS
index 50d8ee87..2e913afe 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTORS
+++ b/CONTRIBUTORS
@@ -1114,6 +1114,8 @@ Reinhard Nissl <rnissl@gmx.de>
  for changing the behaviour when hitting the end of a recording in fast forward mode
  for suggesting to give the cRemote::CallPlugin() function a boolean return value
  for fixing a possible crash in remux.c on 64-bit machines
+ for making cCommand::Execute() use cPipe instead of popen() to avoid problems
+ with open file handles when starting background commands
 
 Richard Robson <richard_robson@beeb.net>
  for reporting freezing replay if a timer starts while in Transfer Mode from the
diff --git a/HISTORY b/HISTORY
index d2936d0d..bb53c5c8 100644
--- a/HISTORY
+++ b/HISTORY
@@ -5085,6 +5085,9 @@ Video Disk Recorder Revision History
 2007-01-26: Version 1.4.5-1
 
 - Fixed i18n characters for the Hungarian texts (thanks to Thomas Günther).
+- Now using cPipe instead of popen() in cCommand::Execute() to avoid problems
+  with open file handles when starting background commands (thanks to Reinhard
+  Nissl).
 
 2007-01-26: Version 1.5.1
 
diff --git a/config.c b/config.c
index f3942668..6ac72a8f 100644
--- a/config.c
+++ b/config.c
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
  * See the main source file 'vdr.c' for copyright information and
  * how to reach the author.
  *
- * $Id: config.c 1.146 2006/07/22 11:57:51 kls Exp $
+ * $Id: config.c 1.147 2007/01/26 13:32:19 kls Exp $
  */
 
 #include "config.h"
@@ -67,8 +67,8 @@ const char *cCommand::Execute(const char *Parameters)
      asprintf(&cmdbuf, "%s %s", command, Parameters);
   const char *cmd = cmdbuf ? cmdbuf : command;
   dsyslog("executing command '%s'", cmd);
-  FILE *p = popen(cmd, "r");
-  if (p) {
+  cPipe p;
+  if (p.Open(cmd, "r")) {
      int l = 0;
      int c;
      while ((c = fgetc(p)) != EOF) {
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ const char *cCommand::Execute(const char *Parameters)
            }
      if (result)
         result[l] = 0;
-     pclose(p);
+     p.Close();
      }
   else
      esyslog("ERROR: can't open pipe for command '%s'", cmd);