How to sleep for five seconds in a batch file cmd

Question

Windows s Snipping tool can capture the screen  but sometimes I want to capture the screen after five seconds  such as taking an image being displayed by the webcam   Run the script and smile at the camera  for example    How do I sleep for 5 seconds in a batch file

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Make a cmd file called sleep cmd   REM Usage  SLEEP Time in MiliSECONDS  ECHO off ping 1 0 0 0 -n 1 -w  1  gt  nul   Copy sleep cmd to c  windows system32  Usage   sleep 500   Sleeps for 0 5 seconds  Arguments in ms  Once copied to System32  can be used everywhere    EDIT  You should also be away that if the machine isn t connected to a network  say a portable that your using in the subway   the ping trick doesn t really work anymore

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You can use VBScript  for example  file myscript vbs    set wsobject   wscript createobject  wscript shell    do while 1 1     wsobject run  SnippingTool exe  0 TRUE     wscript sleep 3000 loop   Batch file    cscript myscript vbs  1

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It can be done with two simple lines in a batch file  write a temporary  vbs file in the  temp  folder and call it    echo WScript Sleep 5000   gt   temp  sleep vbs  cscript   temp  sleep vbs

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Try the Choice command   It s been around since MSDOS 6 0  and should do the trick    Use the  T parameter to specify the timeout in seconds and the  D parameter to specify the default selection and ignore then selected choice   The one thing that might be an issue is if the user types one of the choice characters before the timeout period elapses  A partial work-around is to obfuscate the situation -- use the  N argument to hide the list of valid choices and only have 1 character in the set of choices so it will be less likely that the user will type a valid choice before the timeout expires    Below is the help text on Windows Vista  I think it is the same on XP  but look at the help text on an XP computer to verify   C   gt CHOICE     CHOICE   C choices    N    CS    T timeout  D choice    M text   Description      This tool allows users to select one item from a list     of choices and returns the index of the selected choice   Parameter List      C    choices       Specifies the list of choices to be created                         Default list is  YN        N                  Hides the list of choices in the prompt                         The message before the prompt is displayed                        and the choices are still enabled       CS                 Enables case-sensitive choices to be selected                         By default  the utility is case-insensitive       T    timeout       The number of seconds to pause before a default                        choice is made  Acceptable values are from 0 to                        9999  If 0 is specified  there will be no pause                        and the default choice is selected       D    choice        Specifies the default choice after nnnn seconds                         Character must be in the set of choices specified                        by  C option and must also specify nnnn with  T       M    text          Specifies the message to be displayed before                        the prompt  If not specified  the utility                        displays only a prompt                          Displays this help message      NOTE     The ERRORLEVEL environment variable is set to the index of the    key that was selected from the set of choices  The first choice    listed returns a value of 1  the second a value of 2  and so on     If the user presses a key that is not a valid choice  the tool    sounds a warning beep  If tool detects an error condition     it returns an ERRORLEVEL value of 255  If the user presses    CTRL BREAK or CTRL C  the tool returns an ERRORLEVEL value    of 0  When you use ERRORLEVEL parameters in a batch program  list    them in decreasing order   Examples     CHOICE       CHOICE  C YNC  M  Press Y for Yes  N for No or C for Cancel      CHOICE  T 10  C ync  CS  D y    CHOICE  C ab  M  Select a for option 1 and b for option 2      CHOICE  C ab  N  M  Select a for option 1 and b for option 2

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SLEEP 5 was included in some of the Windows Resource Kits   TIMEOUT 5 was included in some of the Windows Resource Kits  but is now a standard command in Windows 7 and 8  not sure about Vista    PING 1 1 1 1 -n 1 -w 5000  gt NUL For any MS-DOS or Windows version with a TCP IP client  PING can be used to delay execution for a number of seconds   NETSH badcommand  Windows XP Server 2003 only  or CHOICE  this link will help you more

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If you ve got PowerShell on your system  you can just execute this command   powershell -command  Start-Sleep -s 5      Edit  people raised an issue where the amount of time powershell takes to start is significant compared to how long you re trying to wait for  If the accuracy of the wait time is important  ie a second or two extra delay is not acceptable   you can use this approach   powershell -command   sleepUntil    DateTime   Parse   date   time    AddSeconds 5    sleepDuration    sleepUntil Subtract  get-date   TotalMilliseconds  start-sleep -m  sleepDuration    This takes the time when the windows command was issued  and the powershell script sleeps until 5 seconds after that time  So as long as powershell takes less time to start than your sleep duration  this approach will work  it s around 600ms on my machine

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The following hack let s you sleep for 5 seconds  ping -n 6 127 0 0 1  gt  nul   Since ping waits a second between the pings  you have to specify one more than you need

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Can t we do waitfor  T 180   waitfor  T 180 pause will result in  ERROR  Timed out waiting for  pause      waitfor  T 180 pause  gt nul  will sweep that  error  under the rug  The waitfor command should be there in Windows OS after Win95  In the past I ve downloaded a executable named sleep that will work on the command line after you put it in your path   For example  sleep shutdown -r -f  m   yourmachine although shutdown now has -t option built in

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Well this works if you have choice or ping    echo off echo  if   1      goto askq if   1        goto help if  i   1     h  goto help if  1 GTR 0 if  1 LEQ 9999 if  i   2     q  set ans1  1 amp  goto quiet if  1 GTR 0 if  1 LEQ 9999 set ans1  1 amp  goto breakout if  1 LEQ 0 echo  1 is not a valid number  amp  goto help if not   1      echo  amp echo   1  is a bad parameter  amp  goto help goto end   help echo SLEEP runs interactively  by itself  or with parameters  sleep    q   echo where   is in seconds  ranges from 1 - 9999 echo Use optional parameter  q to suppress standard output  echo or type  h or    for this help file echo  goto end   askq set  p ans1 How many seconds to sleep    lt 1-9999  gt   echo  if   ans1       goto askq if  ans1  GTR 0 if  ans1  LEQ 9999 goto breakout goto askq   quiet choice  n  t  ans1   d n  gt  nul if errorlevel 1 ping 1 1 1 1 -n 1 -w  ans1 000  gt  nul goto end   breakout choice  n  t  ans1   d n  gt  nul if errorlevel 1 ping 1 1 1 1 -n 1 -w  ans1 000  gt  nul echo Slept  ans1  second  s   echo    end   just name it sleep cmd or sleep bat and run it

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I wrote a powerbasic program wait exe  where you pass a millisecond parameter to it in your batch file  wait 3000 system  c  windows system32 SnippingTool exe     the code for the EXE   FUNCTION PBMAIN     c    Command    s    Val c   1000   Sleep s           END FUNCTION

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I made this  It is working and show time left in seconds  If you want to use it  add to a batch file   call wait 10   It was working when I tested it   Listing of wait bat  it must be in the working directory or windir system32      echo off  set SW 00  set SW2 00  set  a Sec  1-1  set il 00  echo Wait  1 second for  f  tokens 1 2 3 4 delims       A in    TIME    do set  a HH   A  MM 1  B-100  SS 1  C-100  CC 1  D-100  TBASE   HH 60 MM  60 SS  100 CC  SW CC   set  a TFIN  TBASE   100   ESPERAR for  f  tokens 1 2 3 4 delims       A in    TIME    do set  a HH   A  MM 1  B-100  SS 1  C-100    CC 1  D-100  TACTUAL   HH 60 MM  60 SS  100 CC   SW2 CC   if  SW2  neq  SW  goto notype if  il   0  echo Left  Sec  second  amp  set  a Sec sec-1  amp  set  a il il 1  goto no0  notype set  a il 0  no0  if  TACTUAL  lss  TBASE  set  a TACTUAL  TBASE   TACTUAL  if  TACTUAL  lss  TFIN  goto ESPERAR

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I was trying to do this from within an msbuild task  and choice and timeout both did not work due to I O redirection    I ended up using sleep exe from http   sourceforge net projects unxutils  which is nice because it doesn t require any install and it s tiny     Trying with choice    lt Target Name  TestCmd  gt     lt Exec Command  choice  C YN  D Y  t 5     gt   lt  Target gt    Results in   TestCmd    choice  C YN  D Y  t 5  EXEC   error   The file is either empty or does not contain the valid choices   test proj     Y N   C  test proj 5 9   error MSB3073  The command  choice  C YN  D Y  t 5   exited with code 255      Trying with timeout    lt Target Name  TestCmd  gt     lt Exec Command  timeout  t 5     gt   lt  Target gt    Results in   TestCmd    timeout  t 5 EXEC   error   Input redirection is not supported  exiting the process immediately   test proj  C  test proj 5 7   error MSB3073  The command  timeout  t 5   exited with code 1      Aside   I am actually using  lt Exec Command  sleep 2  amp  dbghost exe    gt  because I am executing dbghost exe multiple times in parallel and it creates temp files databases based on the current epoch time in seconds - which of course means if you start multiple instances  each uses the same temp name  I was originally trying to use MSBuild Extension Pack Thread Sleep command  but it seems that  usually  it was running the sleep task fine  but then starting the  lt exec gt  task in all threads at the same time  and of course dbghost exe would fail with conflicts  So far  using sleep exe seems to be more reliable

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You can make it with timeout    This will be visible  timeout 5  This will not be visible timeout 5  gt nul

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I use the following method entirely based on Windows  XP capabilities to do a delay in a batch file  File DELAY BAT  ECHO OFF REM DELAY seconds  REM GET ENDING SECOND FOR  F  quot TOKENS 1-3 DELIMS    quot    A IN   quot  TIME  quot   DO SET  A H   A  M 1  B  100      S 1  C  100  ENDING  H 60 M  60 S  1  REM WAIT FOR SUCH A SECOND  WAIT FOR  F  quot TOKENS 1-3 DELIMS    quot    A IN   quot  TIME  quot   DO SET  A H   A  M 1  B  100  S 1  C  100  CURRENT  H 60 M  60 S IF  CURRENT  LSS  ENDING  GOTO WAIT  You may also insert the day in the calculation so the method also works when the delay interval pass over midnight

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Two more ways that should work on everything from XP and above  with w32tm  w32tm  stripchart  computer localhost  period 5  dataonly  samples 2  1 gt nul   with typeperf  typeperf  quot  System Processor Queue Length quot  -si 5 -sc 1  gt nul  with mshta  does not require set up network   start  quot  quot   w  b  min mshta  quot javascript setTimeout function   close     5000   quot

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PING -n 60 127 0 0 1 gt nul   in case your LAN adapter is not available

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One hack is to  mis use the ping command   ping 127 0 0 1 -n 6  gt  nul   Explanation    ping is a system utility that sends ping requests  ping is available on all versions of Windows  127 0 0 1 is the IP address of localhost  This IP address is guaranteed to always resolve  be reachable  and immediately respond to pings  -n 6 specifies that there are to be 6 pings  There is a 1s delay between each ping  so for a 5s delay you need to send 6 pings   gt  nul suppress the output of ping  by redirecting it to nul

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Two answers   Firstly  to delay in a batch file  simply without all the obtuse methods people have been proposing   timeout  t  lt TimeoutInSeconds gt    nobreak     http   technet microsoft com en-us library cc754891 aspx  Secondly  worth mentioning that while it may not do exactly what you want  using the inbuilt Windows snipping tool  you can trigger a snip on it without using the mouse  Run the snipping tool  escape out of the current snip but leave the tool running  and hit Control   Print Screen when you want the snip to occur  This shouldn t interfere with whatever it is you re trying to snip

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In Windows xp sp3 you can use sleep command

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I m very surprised no one has mentioned   C   gt  timeout 5     N B  Please note however  thanks Dan   that timeout 5 means      Sleep anywhere between 4 and 5 seconds   This can be verified empirically by putting the following into a batch file  running it repeatedly and calculating the time differences between the first and second echos    echo off echo  time  timeout 5  gt  NUL echo  time

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Timeout  t 1  gt nul  Is like pause in 1 secound  you can take the limed to almost 100 000  99 999  secounds  If you are connected to the internet the best solution would be   ping 1 1 1 1  -n 1 -w 1000  gt nul  When you ping you count in milliseconds  so one second would be 1000 milliseconds  But the ping command is a little iffy  it does not work the same way on offline machines  The problem is that the machine gets confused because it is offline  and it would like to ping a website server host ip  but it can t  So i would recommend timeout  Good luck

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I think the following command can help   pause 5   The syntax of the pause command is  pause d    where d represents the duration  in seconds  I am using Windows 7  32 bit   but I don t know about the others

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There is   SLEEP  lt seconds gt    If you want it in millisecond mode   SLEEP -m  lt time in milliseconds gt    This is more helpful than TIMEOUT because TIMEOUT can be aborted with a click of a key or CTRL   C  for TIMEOUT  t  lt secs gt   nobreak   SLEEP cannot be aborted by anything  except for close button  p   Other one is PING  But PING needs internet connection because you ll be recording the connection of a site

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This is the latest version of what I am using in practice for a ten second pause to see the output when a script finishes   BEST gt  echo done BEST gt  set DelayInSeconds 10 BEST gt  rem Use ping to wait BEST gt  ping 192 0 2 0 -n 1 -w  DelayInSeconds 000  gt  nul   The echo done allows me to see when the script finished and the ping provides the delay  The extra   signs mean that I see the  done  text and the waiting occurs without me being distracted by their commands   I have tried the various solutions given here on an XP machine  since the idea was to have a batch file that would run on a variety of machines  and so I picked the XP machine as the environment likely to be the least capable   GOOD gt  ping 192 0 2 0 -n 1 -w 3000  gt  nul   This seemed to give a three second delay as expected  One ping attempt lasting a specified 3 seconds   BAD gt  ping -n 5 192 0 2 0  gt  nul   This took around 10 seconds  not 5   My explanation is that there are 5 ping attempts  each about a second apart  making 4 seconds  And each ping attempt probably lasted around a second making an estimated 9 seconds in total   BAD gt  timeout 5 BAD gt  sleep  w2000 BAD gt  waitfor  T 180 BAD gt  choice   Commands not available   BAD gt  ping 192 0 2 0 -n 1 -w 10000  gt  nul    wait 10000 milliseconds  ie 10 secs   I tried the above too  after reading that comments could be added to BAT files by using two consecutive colons  However the software returned almost instantly  Putting the comment on its own line before the ping worked fine   GOOD gt     wait 10000 milliseconds  ie 10 secs GOOD gt  ping 192 0 2 0 -n 1 -w 10000  gt  nul   To understand better what ping does in practice  I ran   ping 192 0 2 0 -n 5 -w 5000   This took around 30 seconds  even though 5 5 25  My explanation is that there are 5 ping attempts each lasting 5 seconds  but there is about a 1 second time delay between ping attempts  there is after all little reason to expect a different result if you ping again immediately and it is better to give a network a little time to recover from whatever problem it has had   Edit  stolen from another post     RFC 3330 says the IP address 192 0 2 0 should not appear on the internet  so pinging this address prevents these tests spamming anyone  I have modified the text above accordingly

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If you have an appropriate version of Windows and the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools  it includes a sleep command for batch programs   More at  http   malektips com xp dos 0002 html

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The easiest way I did it was this   Download the Sleep exe at http   www sleepcmd com   The  exe file should be in the same folder as the program you wrote

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This should do the trick  choice  T 5  N  D Y  Replace the 5 with the time in seconds you want to wait

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An improvement of the code proposed by the user Aacini  It has resolution of hundredths of a second and does not fail when the time reaches 23 59 59 99   for  f  tokens 1 2 3 4 delims       A in    TIME    do set  a HH   A  MM 1  B-100  SS 1  C-100  CC 1  D-100  TBASE   HH 60 MM  60 SS  100 CC     Example delay 1 seg  set  a TFIN  TBASE  100   ESPERAR for  f  tokens 1 2 3 4 delims       A in    TIME    do set  a HH   A  MM 1  B-100  SS 1  C-100  CC 1  D-100  TACTUAL   HH 60 MM  60 SS  100 CC  if  TACTUAL  lss  TBASE  set  a TACTUAL  TBASE   TACTUAL  if  TACTUAL  lss  TFIN  goto ESPERAR

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On newer Windows OS versions you can use the command  sleep  w2000   in a DOS script   cmd or  bat  to wait for 2s  2000 ms - substitute the time in ms you need   Be careful to include the  w argument - without it the whole computer is put to sleep  You can use -m instead of  m if you wish and optionally a colon     between the w and the number

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ping waits for about 5 seconds before timing out  not 1 second as was stated above  That is  unless you tell it to only wait for 1 second before timing out   ping 1 0 0 1 -n 1 -w 1000  will ping once  wait only 1 second  1000 ms  for a response  then time out   So an approximately 20-second delay would be   ping 1 0 0 1 -n 20 -w 1000

[batch-file] How to sleep for five seconds in a batch file/cmd

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