Wait command?

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What would the command be to have Windows pause for x seconds during startup and display a Wait message during…?

Chuck Billow

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Can’t do that as the process is asynchronous and multi-threaded.

What are you trying to achieve?

cheers, Paul

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I have a message in a batch file that I want to pause long enough to read, but not necessarily bring to a full stop/pause.

Chuck Billow

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Chuck:  in the BATch file after the message, you want to insert a command

ping -n 6 127.0.0.1 > nul

This will pause for the [number of seconds – 1] that you specify after the “-n” parameter.  “-n 6” means “wait for 5 seconds”.  Change the number to suit!

BATcher

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2 users thanked author for this post.

Drcard:)), CWBillow

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I’ll give that a shot!  Thanks!!

Chuck Billow

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BATcher wrote:

This will pause for the [number of seconds – 1] that you specify after the “-n” parameter. “-n 6” means “wait for 5 seconds”. Change the number to suit!

Tha ping command does not have a “pause # secs” function!

Ping /? shows the following for the n parameter:

-n count       Number of echo requests to send.

And how long it takes to complete -n 6 packets will depend on how fast a particular user’s CPU & NIC card are running and will be different for each PC (i.e. on my particular PC with a 4.9 GHz CPU and a 2.5 GHz NIC card, it only takes 3 secs to send 6 packets to 127.0.0.1).

The correct command to pause a batch file for a set period is the timeout command that’s been available in all versions of Windows since Vista.

TIMEOUT [/T] timeout [/NOBREAK]

Description:
This utility accepts a timeout parameter to wait for the specified
time period (in seconds) or until any key is pressed. It also
accepts a parameter to ignore the key press.

Parameter List:
/T timeout Specifies the number of seconds to wait.
Valid range is -1 to 99999 seconds.

/NOBREAK Ignore key presses and wait specified time.

/? Displays this help message.

NOTE: A timeout value of -1 means to wait indefinitely for a key press.

Examples:
TIMEOUT /?
TIMEOUT /T 10
TIMEOUT /T 300 /NOBREAK
TIMEOUT /T -1

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