Challenge for the Gurus? Start B after A finishes loading.

OK, I THINK this might be a toughie, but if anybody knows the answer, he (or she) is here. I'm still fiddling with the old P2 333 MHz, getting it working really well again after long service as a doorstop. I have it stocked with RAM and a new #2 HD and networked and on cable now, and I want to have it load two programs in fixed sequence at every boot.

I need a bat file (or something else?) that will launch one executable when another program has finished LOADING (not when it has finished RUNNING).

The "start /wait" cmd & parameter won't do it, cuz it works only with a program that runs and ENDS.

My program A, in this case, is Zone Alarm, which takes a looong time to load on the old P2 333, and I want program B to launch only when ZA has finished whirring and checking and connecting and whatever, and becomes a loaded-resident-running utility service, and its icon calms down to the "no activity" display. (Anybody who uses ZA will understand that the icon shows activity very nicely, but lapses into a very ugly old ZA icon design when there's no activity on the line.)

So I want B to be launched only when the ZA loading process has finished, and all is quiet on the Western front.

Ideas?

 

Thanks, robo.

I always have mixed feelings when I post a question here and don't get the solution I need. On the one hand, I'm happy when I don't know the answer and nobody else here does either. I don't feel so bad about not knowing it then. On the other, though, I'm unhappy because I still need the answer and nobody came up with it.

I already have Delayexec and After, two programs that do exactly what that program does: they set the number of ticks from the loading of Windows to the loading of a program. They work, but they don't do what I need them to do.

I can give ZA a delay of 1, say, to get it into the delayed queue (it has to be there, or there will be no predictable relationship between starts in the queue and starts not in the queue) and my checker program a delay of, say, 30, and the desired result happens, but the "wait" hourglass is onscreen for the full delayed time then, and the mouse and keyboard are useless until it goes away. The wait hourglass is there because the delayer is running, counting ticks.

If I shorten the delay for my checker to 15 or 20, then it manages to load before ZA finishes more than half the time.

That's why I'm looking for a solution that reads the "finished loading" status of a program and then launches another program.

But I do appreciate your taking the time to give me that suggestion, my friend.

 

that's hard to do because a batch file is blind to when another program is loaded. you'll need a specialized app for something like this.

 

Kodo,

Yeah, I guessed as much. Any idea what I should look for? Somebody else must have had this minor problem and solved it.

I don't know what I'd search for if I ran a Google search for such an app.

Thanks.

 

well, there this app
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=83

but I don't know if it has this in it..
http://tucows.nyi.net/preview/195754.html

 

Very NIce Try, ma man!

But the 12 Ghosts Timer does exectly what robo's suggestion and my Delayexec.exe and After.exe do: starts a timer that runs for a set number of ticks and then launches the program. It doesn't measure anything about another program (like the Start /Wait control in a batch file does: that only lets the next line run when the previous line has executed and completed). The 12 G Timer starts when Windows starts, and runs until the number of ticks has passed, then launches a preset executable.

Thanks to both of you guys. Once again, you two are the Main Men when I have a problem that needs a solution. (And robo is NOT Adryn.)

For this one, I guess I'll just depend on the Startup Delayer, the 12 Ghosts Timer, the Delayexec, and the After to do their thing, and I'll be patient while they count ticks and the hourglass sits there laughing at me.

 

If it gives output when it's started you could try waiting for it and then starting app2.exe

 

Great idea,but I can't figure out what the output of ZoneAlarm is when it finishes loading.The only trace of any new activity from the program at that point is that it stops using one icon and switches to another, but that's hard-coded into the app, cuz it toggles between the "activity" icons (a set) and the "no-activity" icon all the time.

Thanks, Vlad.

 

Soooorry, but...

...no, I didn't.

It seems to me that lots of people would probably find a use for a utility that would monitor a loading app and then launch another event when the monitored program had finished loading, but ...

the only thing I can find out there is a bounty of programs that will let you TIME-DELAY the launch of programs, so that the fast-loaders can be made to wait for the slow loaders to load ... but that's accomplished by delaying the launch of the fast loader until five, ten, twenty seconds after the launch of the slow-loader.

In my case, the solution was to let several programs launch without delay, then ZA launches after a 5-sec delay, and my mail-checker launches after a 20-second delay, to give ZA time to finish booting and come to rest.

I use a tiny single-file timer program called delayexec.exe to accomplish my delays. You just put the path to delayexec before the path to your program in the command line of a shortcut, and put the number of seconds at the end of the command line.

DelayExec link

(There's a mistake in the example on the information page that link takes you to. The name of the file is delayexec.exe, not delay.exe.)

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