How to wait for a process to terminate to execute another process in batch file

Question

How to wait for a process to terminate before executing another process in a batch file  Let s say I have a process notepad exe that I need to kill before executing wordpad exe  Then  when wordpad exe is terminated  I need to launch notepad exe again   How do I do that

User · Answer

call process1 call process2   in this case the process2 will not begin until process1 have finished

User · Answer

This is an updated version of aphoria s Answer   I Replaced PSLIST and PSEXEC with TASKKILL and TASKLIST   As they seem to work better  I couldn t get PSLIST to run in Windows 7   Also replaced Sleep with TIMEOUT   This Was everything i needed to get the script running well  and all the additions was provided by the great guys who posted the comments   Also if there is a delay before the  exe starts it might be worth inserting a Timeout before the  loop    ECHO OFF  TASKKILL NOTEPAD  START     C  Program Files Windows NT Accessories wordpad exe    LOOP tasklist   find  i  WORDPAD   gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 IF ERRORLEVEL 1     GOTO CONTINUE   ELSE     ECHO Wordpad is still running   Timeout  T 5  Nobreak   GOTO LOOP     CONTINUE NOTEPAD

User · Answer

start  w  does NOT work in all cases   The original solution works great   However  on some machines  it is wise to put a delay immediately after starting the executable   Otherwise  the task name may not appear in the task list yet  and the loop will not work as expected  someone pointed that out    The 2 delays can be combined and put at the top of the loop   Can also get rid of the  else  just to shorten   Example of 2 programs running sequentially   c  prog1 exe   loop1 timeout  t 1  nobreak  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 tasklist   find  i  prog1 exe   gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 if errorlevel 1 goto cont1 goto loop1  cont1  c  prog2 exe  loop2 timeout  t 1  nobreak  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 tasklist   find  i  prog2 exe   gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 if errorlevel 1 goto cont2 goto loop2  cont2   john refling

User · Answer

This is my adaptation johnrefling s  This work also in WindowsXP  in my case i start the same application at the end  because i want reopen it with different parametrs   My application is a WindowForm  NET    echo off taskkill -im MyApp exe  loop1 tasklist   find  i  MyApp exe   gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 if errorlevel 1 goto cont1 echo  Waiting termination of process        timeout  t 1  nobreak  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1        this don t work in windows XP    from  https   stackoverflow com questions 1672338 how-to-sleep-for-five-seconds-in-a-batch-file-cmd 33286113 33286113 typeperf   System Processor Queue Length  -si 1 -sc 1  gt nul s goto loop1  cont1 echo  Process terminated  start new application  START   lt SYMBOLIC-TEXT-NAME gt     lt full-path-of-MyApp2 exe gt    MyApp2-param1   MyApp2-param2  pause

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This works and is even simpler  If you remove ECHO-s  it will be even smaller   REM REM DEMO - how to launch several processes in parallel  and wait until all of them finish  REM   ECHO OFF start   The Title   Echo Close me manually  start   The Title   Echo Close me manually   waittofinish echo At least one process is still running    timeout  T 2  nobreak  gt nul tasklist exe  fi  WINDOWTITLE eq  The Title     find      gt nul if errorlevel 1 goto waittofinish echo Finished  PAUSE

User · Answer

I liked the  START  W  answer  though for my situation I found something even more basic   My processes were console applications   And in my ignorance I thought I would need something special in BAT syntax to make sure that the 1st one completed before the 2nd one started   However BAT appears to make a distinction between console apps and windows apps  and it executes them a little differently   The OP shows that window apps will get launched as an asynchronous call from BAT   But for console apps  that are invoked synchronously  inside the same command window as the BAT itself is running in   For me it was actually better not to use  START  W   because everything could run inside one command window   The annoying thing about  START  W  is that it will spawn a new command window to execute your console application in

User · Answer

Use start  w programname to wait for the end of programname  START  W notepad ECHO Back from notepad   START  W wordpad ECHO Back from wordpad START  W notepad

User · Answer

Try something like this      ECHO OFF  PSKILL NOTEPAD  START     C  Program Files Windows NT Accessories wordpad exe    LOOP PSLIST wordpad  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 IF ERRORLEVEL 1     GOTO CONTINUE   ELSE     ECHO Wordpad is still running   TIMEOUT  T 5   GOTO LOOP     CONTINUE NOTEPAD   I used PSLIST and PSEXEC  but you could also use TASKKILL and TASKLIST  The  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1 is just there to hide all the output from PSLIST  The SLEEP 5 line is not required  but is just there to restrict how often you check if WordPad is still running

[windows] How to wait for a process to terminate to execute another process in batch file

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