Is there any alternative to Process in .NET for running commands in the command line?

Question

In my previous question I detailed the problem I encountered.

One of the solutions is to simulate a user typing the command in the prompt. I don't know how to do it in .NET, since the usual way of doing this is by using System.Diagnostics.Process which causes the error.

I wonder if there is any alternative to that class? What are the differences between using that class and typing the command as a user?

Answer 1

Not that I'm aware of.

If so, it doesn't look like it would solve your issue (your issue appears to be that the program being started has different environment variables when programmatically launched then when manually launched).

Answer 2

Not so sure that it has anything to do with the command prompt. However, you get the exact same behavior as what you get from the command prompt by using the same command line interpreter. Use cmd.exe as the process file name, /c powercfg.exe as the argument.

Answer 3

It looks like the DLL is being loaded dynamically at runtime. You could find what the PATH variable is set to in the commandline then set this using the "control panel\system\advance\?environment?" or call setEnv or whatever the API is (think I might of had to pinvoke the win32 call when I did it last) to change the environment variable in your code.

Remember when working with system EnvVars that they are only read when you first run so you must typically restart apps to get the new settings.

Answer 4

Why not call the exe through the commandline:

using (var process = new Process
{
    StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
    {
         FileName = "cmd.exe",
         Arguments = "/C powercfg.exe",
         RedirectStandardOutput = true,
         UseShellExecute = false,
    }
})
{
    process.Start();
    process.WaitForExit();
}

It's a little unusual but it should work....