Hi,

I've just taken over the VisualCron installation at our site and I'm having some problems getting a couple of batch files to run in sequential order. What seems to happen is that instead of Task 2 waiting for Task 1 to finish, they end up running together at the same time.

For example, if I create a new Group and Job, and add the following tasks...

Task 1 - execute "notepad.exe"
Task 2 - execute "cmd.exe"
Task 3 - execute "notepad.exe"

...I find that the job stops and waits for me to manually close the first notepad window, but the cmd.exe task falls straight through and I get the second notepad window.

I've found a couple of ways to solve this in the cmd.exe task..

1) Check "Use shell execute"
or
2) Uncheck "Store standard output" and "Store standard erro"

...and I then get a command line stay open until I type "exit". I'm guessing that under the covers VisualCron is calling either ShellExecute or CreateProcess and intercepting the stdio streams, but I'm not sure what the implications are in terms of whether the sever or desktop account are used, and whether it can run without a user logged on.

Can you advise?

Thanks,

Mike

I think the main question is what you want to accomplish. Launching applications with desktop access is a bit limited because it requires a desktop and maybe user interaction.

Yes, we do try to capture output and we are waiting for process to exit before capturing full output. The underlying method is CreateProcessWithLogonW with ShellExecute as a parameter. It is not possible to capture output when using ShellExecute option which gives a somewhat different behavior.

But again, what do you want to do? If you do not Tasks to wait there is for example no reason to Run Tasks in order. You can uncheck this at Job level. Then, it will only wait for the last Task to complete.

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