How do I make a batch file wait / sleep for some seconds?

Question

I use a batch file to start up a few of the programs I need running in the background. Up until now, I had used the pause command to execute it after some of the other start-ups finished. I would prefer to use the wait or sleep commands but they do not appear to be included in Windows 7.

Anybody know how to put those commands back in, or a different method that achieves the same results?

Answer 1

There are many sleep utilities you can download and drop into your System32 folder, one is provided with the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit called sleep.exe.

You can also use the ping trick:

:sleep
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 -w 1000 > NUL
ping 127.0.0.1 -n %1 -w 1000 > NUL

then from somewhere in your batch file, you can call it like so:

CALL :sleep 1

Answer 2

You can use the timeout command:

This utility accepts a timeout parameter to wait for the specified time period (in seconds) or until any key is pressed. It also accepts a parameter to ignore the key press.

For example, to wait for 10 seconds:

TIMEOUT /T 10

For more details:

TIMEOUT /?

Answer 3

timeout /t <seconds> /nobreak > NUL

Answer 4

There is also

waitfor SomethingThatIsNeverHappening /t 10

Which will wait for between 1 and 99999 seconds.

Answer 5

sleep.exe is included in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools.

You may use:

sleep /?
sleep seconds
sleep -m microseconds

Answer 6

If you have Python installed (and added the install path to your environment variable), you can let Python do the sleeping with something like:

echo from time import sleep; sleep(3) | python

(If you have Windows Vista or higher, timeout naturally is the way to go, though.)