How to kick off a long process in ASP.NET

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ASP.NET

What's the best way to kick off a long process from an ASP.NET web application? I don't need any return data, I don't even need to tell the user when it's done, I just need the process to kick off and run until it's complete. I thought I was doing it correctly by just invoking the process asynchronously, but it's still timing out at around 4 minutes, same as without the asynch call. I don't want to do the blanket web.config adjustment if I can help it. Do I need my method behind a web service to somehow separate the threads? Or worse, have it in a Windows service or separate application that gets invoked?

Here is basically what I'm doing at this point. In the long process class:

Public Shared Sub LongProcess()
    Using dt As DataTable = GetMyData()
        For Each dr As DataRow In dt.Rows
            DoSomeProcess()
        Next
    End Using
End Sub
'asynch methods for LongProcess
Public Delegate Sub LongProcessAsync()
Public Shared Sub LongProcessCallback(ar As IAsyncResult)  'just close out the thread
    DirectCast(DirectCast(ar, System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.AsyncResult).AsyncDelegate, LongProcessAsync).EndInvoke(ar)
End Sub

Then in the button click on my page:

Dim x As New LongMethods.LongProcessAsync(AddressOf LongMethods.LongProcess)
x.BeginInvoke(AddressOf LongMethods.LongProcessCallback, Nothing)