How can I run a windows batch file but hide the command window?

Question

How can I run a windows batch file but hiding the command window? I dont want cmd.exe to be visible on screen when the file is being executed. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Set the window to hidden?

Answer 2

Check this link for details on how to make the cmd hidden -

http://www.codeproject.com/Questions/74684/Hiding-Command-prompt-while-executing-an-bat-file.aspx

Answer 3

You could write a windows service that does nothing but execute your batch file. Since services run in their own desktop session, the command window won't be visible by the user.

Answer 4

If you write an unmanaged program and use CreateProcess API then you should initialize lpStartupInfo parameter of the type STARTUPINFO so that wShowWindow field of the struct is SW_HIDE and not forget to use STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW flag in the dwFlags field of STARTUPINFO. Another method is to use CREATE_NO_WINDOW flag of dwCreationFlags parameter. The same trick work also with ShellExecute and ShellExecuteEx functions.

If you write a managed application you should follows advices from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmstall/archive/2006/09/28/createnowindow.aspx: initialize ProcessStartInfo with CreateNoWindow = true and UseShellExecute = false and then use as a parameter of . Exactly like in case of you can set property WindowStyle of ProcessStartInfo to ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden instead or together with CreateNoWindow = true.

You can use a VBS script which you start with wcsript.exe. Inside the script you can use CreateObject("WScript.Shell") and then Run with 0 as the second (intWindowStyle) parameter. See http://www.robvanderwoude.com/files/runnhide_vbs.txt as an example. I can continue with Kix, PowerShell and so on.

If you don't want to write any program you can use any existing utility like CMDOW /RUN /HID "c:\SomeDir\MyBatch.cmd", hstart /NOWINDOW /D=c:\scripts "c:\scripts\mybatch.bat", hstart /NOCONSOLE "batch_file_1.bat" which do exactly the same. I am sure that you will find much more such kind of free utilities.

In some scenario (for example starting from UNC path) it is important to set also a working directory to some local path (%SystemRoot%\system32 work always). This can be important for usage any from above listed variants of starting hidden batch.

Answer 5

Native C++ codified version of Oleg's answer -- this is copy/pasted from a project I work on under the Boost Software License.

BOOL noError;
STARTUPINFO startupInfo;
PROCESS_INFORMATION processInformation;
ZeroMemory(&startupInfo, sizeof(startupInfo));
startupInfo.cb = sizeof(startupInfo);
startupInfo.dwFlags = STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW;
startupInfo.wShowWindow = SW_HIDE;
noError = CreateProcess(
    NULL,                                           //lpApplicationName
    //Okay the const_cast is bad -- this code was written a while ago.
    //should probably be &commandLine[0] instead. Oh, and commandLine is
    //a std::wstring
    const_cast<LPWSTR>(commandLine.c_str()),        //lpCommandLine
    NULL,                                           //lpProcessAttributes
    NULL,                                           //lpThreadAttributes
    FALSE,                                          //bInheritHandles
    CREATE_NO_WINDOW | CREATE_UNICODE_ENVIRONMENT,  //dwCreationFlags
    //This is for passing in a custom environment block -- you can probably
    //just use NULL here.
    options.e ? environment : NULL,                 //lpEnvironment
    NULL,                                           //lpCurrentDirectory
    &startupInfo,                                   //lpStartupInfo
    &processInformation                             //lpProcessInformation
);

if(!noError)
{
    return GetLastError();
}

DWORD exitCode = 0;

if (options.w) //Wait
{
    WaitForSingleObject(processInformation.hProcess, INFINITE);
    if (GetExitCodeProcess(processInformation.hProcess, &exitCode) == 0)
    {
        exitCode = (DWORD)-1;
    }
}

CloseHandle( processInformation.hProcess );
CloseHandle( processInformation.hThread );

Answer 6

For any executable file, you can run your program using cmd with "c" parametr:

             /c "your program address"\"YourFileNAme".bat  ->if it's a batch file!

As a final solution, I suggest that you create a .cmd file and put this command in it:

    cmd /c "your program address"\"YourFileNAme".bat
    exit

Now just run this .cmd file.

Answer 7

Using C# it's very easy to start a batch command without having a window open. Have a look at the following code example:

        Process process = new Process();
        process.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
        process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
        process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
        process.StartInfo.FileName = "doSomeBatch.bat";
        process.Start();

Answer 8

This little VBScript from technet does the trick:

Const HIDDEN_WINDOW = 12

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
    & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set objStartup = objWMIService.Get("Win32_ProcessStartup")

Set objConfig = objStartup.SpawnInstance_
objConfig.ShowWindow = HIDDEN_WINDOW
Set objProcess = GetObject("winmgmts:root\cimv2:Win32_Process")
errReturn = objProcess.Create("mybatch.bat", null, objConfig, intProcessID)

Edit mybatch.bat to your bat file name, save as a vbs, run it.

Doc says it's not tested in Win7, but I just tested it, it works fine. Won't show any window for whatever process you run