How can I execute a Windows command line in background?

Question

How can I execute a windows command line in the background, without it interacting with the active user?

Answer 1

This is a little late but I just ran across this question while searching for the answer myself and I found this:

START /B program

which, on Windows, is the closest to the Linux command:

program &

From the console HELP system:

C:\>HELP START

Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command.

START ["title"] [/D path] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
      [/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL | /BELOWNORMAL]
      [/NODE <NUMA node>] [/AFFINITY <hex affinity mask>] [/WAIT] [/B]
      [command/program] [parameters]

    "title"     Title to display in window title bar.
    path        Starting directory.
    B           Start application without creating a new window. The
                application has ^C handling ignored. Unless the application
                enables ^C processing, ^Break is the only way to interrupt
                the application.

One problem I saw with it is that you have more than one program writing to the console window, it gets a little confusing and jumbled.

To make it not interact with the user, you can redirect the output to a file:

START /B program > somefile.txt

Answer 2

I suspect you mean: Run something in the background and get the command line back immediately with the launched program continuing.

START "" program

Which is the Unix equivalent of

program &

Answer 3

Your question is pretty vague, but there is a post on ServerFault which may contain the information you need. The answer there describes how to run a batch file window hidden:

You could run it silently using a Windows Script file instead. The Run Method allows you running a script in invisible mode. Create a .vbs file like this one

Dim WinScriptHost
Set WinScriptHost = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WinScriptHost.Run Chr(34) & "C:\Scheduled Jobs\mybat.bat" & Chr(34), 0
Set WinScriptHost = Nothing

and schedule it. The second argument in this example sets the window style. 0 means "hide the window."

Answer 4

START /MIN program 

the above one is pretty closer with its Unix counterpart program &

Answer 5

You can use this (commented!) PowerShell script:

# Create the .NET objects
$psi = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$newproc = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process
# Basic stuff, process name and arguments
$psi.FileName = $args[0]
$psi.Arguments = $args[1]
# Hide any window it might try to create
$psi.CreateNoWindow = $true
$psi.WindowStyle = 'Hidden'
# Set up and start the process
$newproc.StartInfo = $psi
$newproc.Start()
# Return the process object to the caller
$newproc

Save it as a .ps1 file. After enabling script execution (see Enabling Scripts in the PowerShell tag wiki), you can pass it one or two strings: the name of the executable and optionally the arguments line. For example:

.\hideproc.ps1 'sc' 'stop SomeService'

I confirm that this works on Windows 10.

Answer 6

This is how my PHP internal server goes into background. So technically it should work for all.

start /B "" php -S 0.0.0.0:8000 &

Thanks

Answer 7

A related answer, with 2 examples:

1. Below opens calc.exe:

call START /B "my calc" "calc.exe"

2. Sometimes foreground is not desireable, then you run minimized as below:

call start /min "n" "notepad.exe"

call START /MIN "my mongod" "%ProgramFiles%\MongoDB\Server\3.4\bin\mongod.exe"

Hope that helps.

Answer 8

If you want the command-line program to run without the user even knowing about it, define it as a Windows Service and it will run on a schedule.

Answer 9

You can use my utility. I think the source code should be self explanatory. Basically CreateProcess with CREATE_NO_WINDOW flag.

Answer 10

just came across this thread windows 7 , using power shell, runs executable's in the background , exact same as unix filename &

example: start -NoNewWindow filename

help start

NAME Start-Process

SYNTAX Start-Process [-FilePath] [[-ArgumentList] ] [-Credential ] [-WorkingDirectory ] [-LoadUserProfile] [-NoNewWindow] [-PassThru] [-RedirectStandardError ] [-RedirectStandardInput ] [-RedirectStandardOutput ] [-Wait] [-WindowStyle {Normal | Hidden | Minimized | Maximized}] [-UseNewEnvironment] []

Start-Process [-FilePath] <string> [[-ArgumentList] <string[]>] [-WorkingDirectory <string>] [-PassThru] [-Verb
<string>] [-Wait] [-WindowStyle <ProcessWindowStyle> {Normal | Hidden | Minimized | Maximized}]
[<CommonParameters>]

ALIASES saps start

Answer 11

You can see the correct way to do this in this link:

How to Run a Scheduled Task Without a Command Window Appearing

Summarizing, you have to checkbox for 'Run whether user is logged on or not'. Task user credentials should be enter after pressing 'Ok'.

Answer 12

I did this in a batch file: by starting the apps and sending them to the background. Not exact to the spec, but it worked and I could see them start.

rem   Work Start Batch Job from Desktop
rem   Launchs All Work Apps
@echo off
start "Start OneDrive" "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\OneDrive.exe"
start  "Start Google Sync" "C:\Program Files\Google\Drive\GoogleDriveSync.exe"
start skype
start "Start Teams" "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Teams\current\Teams.exe"
start Slack
start Zoom
sleep 10
taskkill /IM "explorer.exe"
taskkill /IM "teams.exe"
taskkill /IM "skype.exe"
taskkill /IM "slack.exe"
taskkill /IM "zoom.exe"
taskkill /IM "cmd.exe"
@echo on

killing explorer kills all explorer windows, I run this batch file after start up, so killing explorer is no issue for me. You can seemingly have multiple explorer processes and kill them individually but I could not get it to work. killing cmd.exe is to close the CMD window which starts because of the bad apps erroring.