[SOLVED] making another program launch as soon as another one is launched

[AlexTheFern]

for example, when i launch minecraft, obs launches automatically.

 

[Eximo]

Fairly simple to make a shortcut to a powershell script that launches both programs.

Scheduled tasks might also be able to do it from a more GUI perspective.

 

[AlexTheFern]

Fairly simple to make a shortcut to a powershell script that launches both programs.

Scheduled tasks might also be able to do it from a more GUI perspective.

how would i do that?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

you can use AutoIt to do it very easily or even AutoHotkey

script could launch one, then the other. you could just automate the clicking of both the shortcuts you want to execute

AutoIt Downloads - AutoIt

You can download the main AutoIt package and other related scripting tools from this page.

www.autoitscript.com

 

[AlexTheFern]

i saw online that you could do it with task scheduler, and a trigger when one is launched, but how am i supposed to do it that way?

 

[Eximo]

Task Scheduler is not that complicated. I suggest sitting down and making a simple one with calculator launching notepad or something.

Powershell is designed to be a simple scripting language. Generally very straight forward.

You can open Powershell ISE on Windows and write the script there. It would basically just consist of two lines.

Start-Process C:\MyApplication.exe
Start-Process C:\MySecondApplicatio.exe

You would end up with a little file with a .PS1 extension. Put that somewhere. Then make a shortcut to it, and change the icon give it name what have you and place it on the desktop.

Just have to find the executables for the programs, and give full paths to them.

 

[Grobe]

I bet on Autohotkey. It can wait for another window/app to successfully appear - or make the script so it dismiss if any error messages (need adjustments over time).

Eg : you don't want Obs to run if your game fail to launch within a specific amount of time.

 

[Eximo]

You could do all that with powershell. A little sleep command, a text search through the running processes, loop until the first program launches, or you detect some sub process starting up, and then escape clause timeout before launching OBS, then even a further loop to see that OBS starts up and re-launch it if not.

And you could also use that opportunity to feed any command line launch options to those programs.

Powershell can more or less take any action a user might make by hand and then even more complex on top of it.

If you are interested in general IT or system admin type jobs related to Windows client or server, a great skill to pick up.