Relaunching a windows app using a batch script

YTS_Jim — Sat, 21 Sep 2019 13:26:38 +0000

We recently had need to restart an app server exe automatically when the demonstration license it was running on caused the server to close regularly, annoying everyone trying to learn the system. We had need of a script (YAY) to check if it was running and restart it when required.

Requirements:

Check to see if the app is running on start if not running, start it.
wait for some period of time (60 seconds)
Check to see if the app is running, if not running, start it

Flourishes:

Date app last restarted is displayed in title
ability to close script with a button press
ability to cancel wait time and relaunch app now
ability to log when app was restarted

Working on it:

checking if a process is running:

It turns out that checking if a process is running is relatively easy:

tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq appServer.exe" | findstr "appServer.exe"
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 Echo No server Process found
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto start

and of course, now you have to choose:

choice /T 60 /D y /C YABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXZ /N >NUL
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto loop

now we start the exe

start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\AppVision 4.0\Bin\appServer.exe"

Set the title

title appServer (re)Started at %NowDate% %NowTime% (Press X to exit script before closing appServer.exe)

Pulling it all together:

@echo off
title appServer (re)Launching script started at %time:~0,2%_%time:~3,2%_%time:~6,2% (Press X to exit script before closing appServer.exe)
pushd "C:\Program Files (x86)\AppVision 4.0\Bin"

:loop
timeout 2 >NUL
rem ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 >NUL
echo.
tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq appServer.exe" | findstr "appServer.exe"
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 Echo No server Process found
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto start
echo Server process found at %time%, waiting 60 seconds
echo.
rem timeout 60
rem ping 127.0.0.1 -n 30 >NUL
choice /T 60 /D y /C YABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXZ /N >NUL
rem echo %ERRORLEVEL%
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto loop
goto eof

:start
set NowTime=%time:~0,2%_%time:~3,2%_%time:~6,2%
set NowDate=%date:~10,4%_%date:~4,2%_%date:~7,2%

cls
echo starting
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\AppVision 4.0\Bin\appServer.exe"
title appServer (re)Started at %NowDate% %NowTime% (Press X to exit script before closing appServer.exe)
choice /T 10 /D y /C YABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXZ /N >NUL
rem ping 127.0.0.1 -n 11 >NUL
goto loop

:eof
popd
echo script finished due to keypress
rem pause