diff --git a/lib/neography/tasks.rb b/lib/neography/tasks.rb
index abc8b54..e95261b 100644
--- a/lib/neography/tasks.rb
+++ b/lib/neography/tasks.rb
@@ -67,6 +67,22 @@
     end
      puts value
   end
+
+  desc "Start the Neo4j Server in the background"
+  task :start_no_wait do
+    puts "Starting Neo4j in the background..."
+    if OS::Underlying.windows? 
+      if %x[reg query "HKU\\S-1-5-19"].size > 0 
+        value = %x[neo4j/bin/Neo4j.bat start-no-wait]  #start service
+      else
+        puts "Starting Neo4j directly, not as a service."
+        value = %x[neo4j/bin/Neo4j.bat start-no-wait]
+      end      
+    else
+     value = %x[neo4j/bin/neo4j start-no-wait]       
+    end
+     puts value
+  end
   
   desc "Stop the Neo4j Server"
   task :stop do
diff --git a/neography.gemspec b/neography.gemspec
index 676b1ae..b7fa858 100644
--- a/neography.gemspec
+++ b/neography.gemspec
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ Gem::Specification.new do |s|
   s.add_development_dependency "coveralls"
   s.add_dependency "httpclient", ">= 2.3.3"
   s.add_dependency "rake", ">= 0.8.7"
-  s.add_dependency "json", ">= 1.6.0"
+  s.add_dependency "json", ">= 1.7.7"
   s.add_dependency "os", ">= 0.9.6"
   s.add_dependency "rubyzip", ">= 0.9.7"
   s.add_dependency "multi_json", ">= 1.3.2"