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I'm using Windows 7, and have a simple batch file to copy portable executables off my thumb drive to %TEMP%, and then start them. The goal is to prevent Windows from holding my thumbdrive hostage until I kill all the programs I started up from it.

However the control flow does not continue to the next app unless I kill the first one, which obviously doesn't work for this purpose.

In a Unix shell script I'd simply add & after the executable I start up, but I can't find an equivalent for batch files.

How can I do this?

1 Answer 1

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You can use the start command.

Like so: start someprogram.exe

It will start the program then give control back to the main batch file, running the second program in the background.

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  • Excellent: thanks. I'm sure that was a painfully dumb question to anyone who regularly works with batch files.
    – iconoclast
    Aug 23, 2012 at 22:33
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    If the path for the executable contains spaces, you need to use start "" "foo\my program.exe". Type start /? for details.
    – paradroid
    Aug 23, 2012 at 22:33
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    Not dumb at all, it's a good question. You can also run batch files from other batch files using the call command. On StackOverflow.com there's a question with a list of cool tricks you can do on the Windows command line, it's great!
    – Mark Allen
    Aug 23, 2012 at 23:42

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