How to run a command at cmd line?

[laudy]

I am very new to VB. In VBscript, I am able to run commands (regsvr32.exe /s /c ... regedit -s ... net stop... etc.) in a hidden cmd.exe window using WSH and creating a ("wscript.shell") object and passing whatever the command is to a little sub.

How can I run a program like cmd.exe in a hidden window and wait till it finishes execution to return to the VB app? (I need to stop services, register Dlls, and install registry keys.) Thanks.

[john_murphy]

Got this from the help hope this is what you want.

john_m_murphy@hotmail.com
Co Galway, Ireland

' In Microsoft Windows:
' Specifying 0 as the second argument opens the application in
' hidden size and gives it the focus.

RetVal = Shell("C:\WINDOWS\CALC.EXE", 1) ' Run Calculator.

Here are the constants
Constant Value Description

vbHide 0
Window is hidden and focus is passed to the hidden window.

vbNormalFocus 1
Window has focus and is restored to its original size and position.

vbMinimizedFocus 2
Window is displayed as an icon with focus.

vbMaximizedFocus 3
Window is maximized with focus.

vbNormalNoFocus 4
Window is restored to its most recent size and position. The currently active window remains active.

vbMinimizedNoFocus 6
Window is displayed as an icon. The currently active window remains active.

[laudy]

Thanks for the reply! That helps me out very much.

Another quick question for anyone...
Would anyone know how to pass a command to the external program?

--Say you wanted to stop the Alerter service in NT and you wanted to run "net stop "Alerter" from the command prompt in a hidden command window.

--How could you pass "net stop Alerter" to
Shell("cmd.exe" , 0) ??

Thanks for any thoughts on this!

[laudy]

In case anybody cares....
You can use:
Shell("cmd.exe /c <whatever command you want to run from a command prompt here>")
To send a command to cmd.exe...

Example:

Shell("cmd.exe /c net stop w3svc")

(to stop web publishing service)

Im sure this is the clunkiest way to do this, but what do I know? <nothing>

[gsc1ugs]

Is it possible to track thethreads of this?