Running Windows Batch File

07-03-2021 admin

Run Bat File Windows 10
Run Windows Batch File Debug Mode
Run Windows Batch File From Cmd
Run Windows Batch File Minimized
Running Windows Batch File Free
Run Windows Batch File From Matlab
Running Windows Batch File Commands

Start “” c: windows otepad.exe file.txt. In double quotes, after start, the specification must specify the name of the batch file displayed in the command line header. This is an optional parameter, but in the absence of these quotes, executing bat files containing quotes in paths and parameters can go in unexpected ways. Sep 05, 2013 Open an elevated command prompt (run as administrator) the prompt will show C:windowssystem32 by default. Change the directory to the directory where you have your batch file. You might find it easier if you move the batch file and the program file back to the C drive. At the prompt, type the name of your.bat file and press Enter.

Microsoft Windows users can run batch files or other files in a minimized window by using the command prompt start command. Running a batch file minimized is useful for when you need to run a batch file but don't want the user to interrupt its operation. Below is an example of how the start command can be used to start the batch file myfile.bat as a minimized window.

start /min myfile.bat

Additional information about this command and other options it's able to perform is found on our start command page.

Note

If the batch file does not end with the exit command, it will keep an MS-DOS command prompt window open after the batch file is closed. Alternatively, you can use the following command to start a batch file and also exit the window.

start /min myfile.bat ^& exit

Run Bat File Windows 10

To start the same line from a scheduled task, enter the command below into Windows Task Scheduler.

cmd.exe /c start /min myfile.bat ^& exit

Additional information

See our batch file definition for further information and related links.

Batch files can be used to store a series of commands which can then used by the command line interpreter CMD as an input. As we know, CMD or Command Prompt can take various commands as input and processes them. To enter the command we open CMD and type the commands directly. The thing is, we can save all our commands in a text file and save them. This is where batch file comes into play.

A batch file is a text file with .bat, .cmd, or .btm file extensions, containing the CMD commands. When we run a batch file, the commands written in it are executed one by one in the Command Prompt.

Why use a batch file?

A batch file can be used to complete repetitive or common tasks. It is a script file used to automate tasks. In a batch file we can use loops (for), conditional statements (if), control statements (goto), etc. We can run a batch file directly from the command prompt by typing its name. Also, we can run one batch file from another batch file using the CALL command.

Batch file prerequisites

Run Windows Batch File Debug Mode

Before we can create a batch file, we have to be familiar with writing CMD commands. We need to be familiar of some basic Windows CMD Commands which will help us create basic batch files. Also, when creating batch files we should know that:

title: used to change the title text displayed on top to CMD window
echo – used to display the string as the output. We can use ON or OFF option for ECHO to turn the echoing feature on or off. If we turn on the ECHO, the CMD will display the command it is executing
pause – used to stop the execution of Windows batch file
exit – used to exit the Command Prompt
cls – used to clear the command prompt screen
:: or REM – used to add a comment in the batch file

How to open a batch file

To open a batch file using cmd, we need to navigate to that folder/directory using the command line and then type the name of that file along with its file extension. For example, if we have a file in “C:test.bat”, we would first navigate to the folder using the command:

Then we would run the batch file by entering the name of the file and press Enter:

Run Windows Batch File From Cmd

We can also simply double-click the .bat file and it should run.

How to create a batch file in Windows?

Let’s see how to create a simple batch file.

Open a new notepad file. You can also use any similar text file editor, like Notepad++.

We will enter the following commands in the text file:

Next, we have to save the text file with the extension .bat instead of .txt. In our case we will name it test.bat.

Keep in mind that Notepad will first offer to save the file with .txt extension, so we have to make sure to change that to the .bat extension. If you don’t see the extension, you can go to Control Panel and then choose File Explorer Options > View tab > Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types.

Now that we have a test.bat file, we can simply double-click it to run it.

If we change the first line to echo on, we will get the following:

Run Windows Batch File Minimized

The command echo off is typically added to the start of most batch files. With that commands themselves won’t be printed to the Command Prompt, but the results will be. If we put “@” in front of “echo off”, we won’t see that line in the output. Also note that CMD will pause and wait for us to press any key. If we remove the pause command from the test.bat file, CMD would simply run the file and then close. We can have as many pause commands as we want. For example, we can put pause between other two commands.

Something a bit more complex

Let’s now try to check connectivity to utilizewindows.com. For that we will enter the following set of commands in our .bat file:

In the list of commands we see the following line:

This line will execute the ping command. The “>>” part means that we want to save the command results to the “results.txt” file. This is great when we want to save data to be reviewed later.