I'm struggling to run a program from my VBScript .vbs file. Substituting the line for a MsgBox works fine, so I know its definitely the "open program" line (oShell.Run("Release\My Application.exe")).
Anyway, this is a VBscript called start.vbs which is run from the root directory of a USB drive. It checks to see if .net framework 4.0 is installed and if it is then it should run My Application.exe (note the space... it might make a difference). My Application.exe is in a folder called Release.
As it is a USB drive I can't use explicit drive letters, eg: oShell.run("e:\Release\My Application.exe") although trying this also doesn't appear to work. Typing "e:\Release\My Application.exe" into a cmd window works fine, and runs the program as it is meant to work.
In the vbscript it just doesn't appear to do anything. Any reason?
Here is my code:
Option Explicit
Dim oShell
Dim value
On Error Resume Next
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
value = oShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\Policy\v4.0\30319")
If Err.Number = 0 Then
'Here I am struggling
oShell.Run("Release\My Application.exe")
Else
MsgBox("Version 4.0 of the .NET Framework is NOT installed.")
End If
I have commented above the line that doesn't work.
Thank you.
Not quite sure if this is the best answer, but I tried it and it work, so I'll just go ahead and post my idea.
I just used explorer.exe as a mediator and was able to open the file.
So the line that you're stuck with should probably become something like:
oShell.Run("explorer ""Release\My Application.exe""")
I tried it if it'll work in folder that is not in the System path and was able to open the executable.
Note : There may be better approaches.
Update: Thomas reported that the following code worked for him (the approach is better), the idea behind both approaches however is to quote the path (as you would do this in the Command Prompt, so filenames / folders with spaces in the path are properly resolved):
oShell.run("""Release\My Application.exe""")
Related
I have a .bat file which opens an application and then executes a file that runs a job within the application. I cannot close the cmd window which opens when the task runs in windows task scheduler.
"C:\Proram Files (x86)\ \ \ Robot.exe" execute =f "S:\dept\ Team\ \ YearEndAudit\Main.xaml"
Any assistance would be much appreciated.
Regards,
Jeff
I may have misunderstood you, but what I understood was:
You are opening an executable with your CMD but are unable to close
the CMD after that.
I'm pretty sure that this amount of information is more than enough to solve your case, but we have very little data anyway, and the data is confusing. Please try to improve on your next post.
What is happening is that you are probably just putting the name of the program / script in your CMD, like:
program.exe
This causes the program to depend on the CMD to run, and also prevents the window from being closed. You can solve this problem using "start" at the beginning of everything, such as:
start "" "X:\Path\program.exe" execute -f "everythingyouwants"
You may need to be in the program folder, since some programs done lazily may consider your current location as the default location and may not find the dependencies they need.
If you care to stay in the folder you are currently in, you can use:
pushd "thepath\ofthe\program"
start program.exe
popd
Another way is to hide the window creating a script in VBS, such as:
Set oShell = CreateObject ("Wscript.Shell")
Dim strArgs
strArgs = "cmd /c X:\YOURSCRIPTPATH\YOURSCRIPTNAME.bat/cmd"
oShell.Run strArgs, 0, false
However, if the path also needs quotes, we can have conflicts. The above is not ideal but may help sometime.
If none of this works for you, let us know.
Hope this helps,
K.
We have a vbs script that runs once a month. The script ran well for the most part but as a couple months ago one command stop working
The vbs script is executed by Windows Scheduler
Inside this script we set a variable called "launch"
Set launch = WScript.CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" )
and later in the program we use this command
launch.run("runthis.BAT")
We do not specify the full path in the command and to my knowledge we never have. This bat file resides in the same directory that the vbs script does. I guess this is why it was setup to run that way.
We are not sure what happened and the sys admins are not sure what could have changed to cause it to no longer work.
Please keep in mind we are not VBS specialists and this is something that has been in place for several years.
Any suggestions or resources to look at would be appreciated.
In order for us to provide a better answer, please update your question with the script you are having trouble with. We don't know what the launch object is - hopefully something other than WScript.Shell. Nevertheless you should be able to run a batch file this way:
Dim objShell
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
objShell.Run "C:\your_folder\your_batch_file.bat"
Replace the launch.run part of your script with this code and update it with the correct path and name of your batch file (update "C:\your_folder\your_batch_file.bat" part).
I am pretty new to all this VBS stuff because basically all I need to do is to make one simple VBS script, which I have possibly written, however, my problem is that it gives me 800A0035 or 800A004C error when I execute it for the first time on a particular PC, as soon as I execute it for the second time, it runs just OK and does what it is supposed to do. Incidentally, on my own computer it works OK even on the first execution.
I know that the errors have something to do with the wrong paths but I have checked my script several times and I am 100% positive that they are correct.
Here is the script:
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
objFSO.MoveFile "rar.bat" , "rarp.bat"
'HideBat.vbs
CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "rarp.bat", 0, True
What the script is supposed to do is to rename the rar.bat file to rarp.bat and run that batch file (rarp.bat) without popping up the command prompt. What the batch file does is not relevant, I guess, but anyway, it just runs WinRAR.
The rar.bat file and the VBS script are in the same folder, that's why I have used relative paths in the script. I cannot use absolute paths because I need to run the script on several computers.
I have read somewhere on the internet that by default VBS script first looks for the files in C:\Windows\System32 when relative paths are used. I have even tried using absolute paths in the script but it didn't work either. Here is how I need them to look like: %systemdrive%\users\%username%\appdata\roaming\rar.bat but this simply didn't work in the VBS script.
I really think that what I need is really a simple script but apparently it's pretty hard to get it working properly. I will be very grateful to those who help me.
Thank you a lot in advance.
Regards.
The only way your script - at least the part published - can give an error is by not finding the source file for renaming, you should have added full script and error message to be sure.
I suppose this is caused by a security setting on your pc that are more forgiving than on the rest of the pc's, eg UAC ? On the other pc's, try to put the files in a map like c:\test and then run it again after checking that the file rar.bat does exist in the same map. Do you have the same credentials (admin) on the other pc's ?
If you just want to run the bat file hidden, why the renaming ?
how do you download the bat ? and how then is invoked the script ? could be a timing issue that the second time is no longer a problem. In that case check in your script if the file is allready there and do a sleep in a loop while it doesn't
If you want to use the absolute path you could try this
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set WshSysEnv = WshShell.Environment("PROCESS")
path = WshSysEnv("USERPROFILE") & "\appdata\roaming\rar.bat"
wscript.echo path
objFSO.MoveFile path , "rarp.bat"
CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "rarp.bat", 1, True
I'm trying to "hide" some of my Perl program from the end user to make things easier on them. I'm doing what I can to keep them out of the command prompt. The program itself has a GUI designed in Perl/Tk, so they don't have to worry about the command prompt.
Could I write out a quick batch file that goes along the lines of:
START perl 'C:\[some path here]\myscript.pl'
with START to start a program, the Perl interpretor as my program, and the path/name of my Perl script as the parameter?
Would I have to specify where to find perl or would Windows just know because perl is in the computer's PATH variable?
I have a totally evil VBS script and batch file to deal with this kind of thing with Strawberry Perl Portable. The VBS script runs the batch file without spawning a cmd window. The batch file works out where it is, where perl.exe is relative to it, and runs the perl script. In this case it's to run a Catalyst server, but can be used for anything else too.
Here's the vbs (shudder):
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run chr(34) & fso.GetParentFolderName(wscript.ScriptFullName) & "\perlshell.bat"& Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing
And here's the batch script (only slightly less shudder):
echo off
set bindir=%~dp0
set perlpath=%bindir%perl\bin
set buildpath=%bindir%\bin
set PATH=%PATH%;%perlpath%;%buildpath%
"%perlpath%\wperl.exe" "%bindir%MyPhp\script\myphp_server.pl" -p 35900
you don't need "start" for this. either add perl.exe from your path or specify the full path to the perl interpreter.
so ... put this in your batch file:
c:\program files\perl.exe "c:\whatever\myscript.perl"
-don
If the idea is to keep them away from the command line, why use a batch file at all? Why not just make a shortcut? (You could use Win32::Shortcut if you don't want to make one by hand.)
There's an easier way. For windows:
Go to the desktop -> right click -> create a shortcut
make your target look like (i.e. the path to the perl.exe file) something like the following - I'll show you what mine looks like
C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe
In my case I have Strawberry Perl installed
right click desktop shortcut -> click properties
In the target input box, alter it to look something like mine:
C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe D:\Developer\CustomTools\login.pl
where login.pl is the absolute path to my perl script
from there you should have a shortcut created to allow execution of a perl script.
In case you might be interested:
in the properties popup you can also assign this invocation of the perl script to a keyboard button press and assign it a shortcut key to launch anytime ^_^
For me, I chose to do:
ctrl+alt+i
to stand for login - to invoke the login.pl script I wrote. be aware of default system keyboard combinations
If you have any questions, let me know!
Thanks for you time!
This is probably batch scripting 101, but I can't find any clear explanation/documentation on why this is happening or if my workaround is actually the solution. So basically any terminology or links to good sources is really appreciated.
So I have a program I want to execute via batch script (along with several other programs). It's the only one where the exe is not in a Program Files folder. I can get it to start like this:
C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\weirdmodule.exe
But I get an error along the lines of:
Run-time Error '3024':
Could not find file
C:\Users\MyUserName\Desktop\ModuleSettings.mdb
So it seems that the program is looking for its settings files from the same location that the batch script starts up. Given that I finally got everything to work by doing the following:
cd C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\
weirdmodule.exe
That works fine, and it's not the end of the world to have to go this route (just one extra line), but I've convinced myself that I'm doing something wrong based on lack of basic understanding.
Anybody know or can point me to why it works this way?
Oh, and doing the following:
start "C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\weirdmodule.exe"
doesn't do anything at all.
Thanks,
you are doing it perfectly :-)
the executable is probably looking for this file in the "current working directory", which is being set, when you "cd" to it before.
you can set your working directory manually by creating a shortcut to your batch file; right click; properties.
edit:
you can also set your current working directory using the start command:
start "Title" /D "C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\" "weirdmodule.exe"
edit:
If you like to pass params, just add them to the executable filename as you would in a regular shortcut:
start "Title" /D "C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\" "weirdmodule.exe" "param1 param2"
or
start "Title" /D "C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\" "weirdmodule.exe param1 param2"
For reference, the syntax is described here: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/ntcmds.mspx?mfr=true.
What's happening is that weirdmodule.exe is looking in the "current directory" for the .mdb file. You might be able to tell it where to find the .mdb file through a command line parameter or some other configuration method (registry or .ini file maybe). How you'd specify the location is entirely up to the weirdmodule.exe program, though.
Other than that, your current workaround is probably what you're stuck with.
As far as your problem with using start.exe... the start.exe program has the very, very odd behavior (bizarre behavior in my opinion) of treating the first parameter as the 'title' to put in the window if (and only if) the first parameter is in quotes. So you have a couple of options:
Don't use quotes to specify the program. This works for you because you don't need quotes (there aren't any spaces or other special characters in the path that would require quoting it):
start C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\weirdmodule.exe
Give an empty (or some other string) title as the first parameter. This is something you'd have to do if your path required quotes:
start "" "C:\WeirdProgram\WeirdProgramModule\weirdmodule.exe"