Close and restart a process after a certain time period in batch - windows

Question

I'm trying to make a batch file that opens a certain exe and then, after (for example) 5 minutes, closes it then reopens it again. I have tried this:
#echo off
:loop
cd /d %~dp0
certain exe
timeout /t "time" (by minutes)
taskkill /f /im "certain exe"
goto loop
but it wouldn't close the exe nor open it, what can I do?

Answer 1

The problem is that cmd will wait for the current command to end before executing the next command, so timeout (and taskill) will not be executed until example.exe closes by itself.
To ensure that cmd doesn't wait example.exe, you'll need to use start /B, as in this example:
#echo off
:loop
start /B "example.exe"
ping -n seconds_of_delay+1 127.0.0.1>nul
taskkill /f /im "example.exe"
goto :loop
Replace seconds_of_delay+1 with the number of seconds you want the time period to last plus one.
/B is needed because, without it, start would execute example.exe in a new window (if you want that, simply use start).
I used ping as the way to create a time delay because it has been found to consume less processor time than sleep or timeout (you can find more details here).