Many organizations are too small to cost-effectively
deploy software by using tools such as Microsoft
Systems Management Server (SMS). The person
responsible for software installation—typically
an external IT consultant or an employee with
part-time support duties—falls back on manually
installing each application on system rebuilds or new installations,
which can be a slow and potentially error-prone process. However, by
using a simple batch file and cmd.exe’s Start command, it’s possible
to speed up the deployment process and reduce the risk of accidental
omissions. Let’s look at when and why you’d want to use this method,
then walk through how to deal with some of the problems you might
encounter.
Why Start?
Cmd.exe’s Start command is a simple tool with features that make it
ideal for basic setup automation. In general, any command you can
run on a Windows system can be run from a batch file. You can add
command-line options as necessary, and the batch file can wait for
each command to finish before running the next command.
Why use Start? It’s easy to forget specific applications that you
need to install for a system. For example, you might forget to install a
small application even though it’s important to a client. At small sites
that you rarely visit, you might get distracted by troubleshooting tasks
in the middle of configuring a system and forget where you are in a
chain of application installations. By wrapping all of the setup launchers
into a batch file, there’s no danger of forgetting an application. If
you don’t need to install a particular application in the set, you can
always cancel its installation and go on to the next one.
It’s also easy to lose specific application sources that are on a network.
Again, a batch file will have all of these locations in it, eliminating
the headache of searching for those items.
Finally, even when you do know where everything is, you can
waste a significant amount of time navigating to files and waiting for
applications to start up and shut down. The Start command will shave
off some of this start-up time. And when applications have installers
that support command-line automation, installation can even proceed
while you’re doing other work elsewhere. Let’s look at the proper
way to run setups now.
Use the Wait Option
By default, the Start command always spawns an application in a new
process and continues on its way. Obviously, it’s not a good idea to
start up 17 different installers simultaneously; the resource demand
would overload almost any PC. In any case, well-behaved Windows
Installer (.msi)–based installation programs will refuse to run if
another .msi-based installation is already running, making it easier
for Windows to untangle applications. To handle this situation, simply include the /wait option with the Start command.
You can abbreviate the /wait option
to /w. To run the installer located at z:\dsp xp\WindowsXP-KB926139-x86-ENU.exe, you
would start it like this:
start /w z:\dsp\xp\WindowsXP-KB926139
-x86-ENU.exe
The batch file waits until WindowsXPKB926139-
x86-ENU.exe terminates and
only then goes to the next command. Occasionally
some applications—usually very
old ones—run a chain of their own application
installations and exit before processes
they’ve launched actually terminate. You’re
unlikely to run into these older applications
very often, but if you do, you can still use the
batch file after adopting one of two strategies.
Either place a single such application at
the very end of the batch file, where it won’t
matter that the /wait does you no good, or
insert a Pause command in the batch file
immediately after the line on which you run
the installer:
start z:\dsp\legacy\oldapp.exe
echo wait for OldApp to finish
installing && pause
Although it theoretically doesn’t help
in this situation to use the /w option, it’s a
good habit to use in creating scripts for setup
chaining.
Set the Working Directory
On some occasions, you might need to control
the working directory of the launched
application. For example, some installers
might use user-specific license files or need
a local directory for extraction and not automatically
get the user’s temp folder. You can
force the working directory by using the /d
option. If the application needs files from the
OldAppData folder in the user’s profile, you
can run it like this:
start /w /d %userprofile%\OldAppData
z:\dsp\legacy\oldapp.exe
Handling Paths with Spaces
The single most significant problem people
encounter when using the Start command is
its behavior with file paths containing spaces.
If you check the command-line options for
the Start command, you’ll see why. Omitting
some of the options for brevity, the Help
display looks like this:
START ["title"] ... [command/program]
When the Start command sees a quoted
string in its command line, Start assumes that
you want to create a new window with the
quoted string as the title. This means that if
you try to run the installer z:\dsp\misc\Acme
Shipping.msi by using the command
start /w "z:\dsp\misc\Acme Shipping.exe"
you won’t see the Acme Shipping.exe installer
start. Instead, an empty command-prompt
window will pop up with the title z:\dsp misc\Acme Shipping.exe.
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