Page 1 of 1

START Program.exe works, START path\Program.exe fails

Posted: 2021-Nov-08, 5:55 am
by Rekrul
I use a program called Internet Download Accelerator. The main executable is named "ida.exe". It's installed in;

c:\Program Files\Internet Download Accelerator\

It can be called from the command line, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to act like other programs.

This works;

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\Internet Download Accelerator\ida.exe" %URL%
But ties up the script until the program is closed.

This also works;

Code: Select all

cd /d "C:\Program Files\Internet Download Accelerator\"
start ida.exe %URL%
The program is started as a separate process and the script is free to continue.

However this does NOT work;

Code: Select all

start "c:\Program Files\Internet Download Accelerator\ida.exe" %URL%
The program never opens.

Am I doing something wrong? I was under the impression that using the start command to start a program would be 100% identical to just typing its name, only that it would be started in a separate process. It's worked with every other program I've used it on, but it doesn't work with this one.

It works if you just type the path and the name, it works if you CD to the directory and start the program, but you can't run it with start and the path\name.

Re: START Program.exe works, START path\Program.exe fails

Posted: 2021-Nov-09, 5:02 pm
by Simon Sheppard
You need to give the START command a title:

Code: Select all

start "anything you want" "c:\Program Files\Internet Download Accelerator\ida.exe" %URL%

Re: START Program.exe works, START path\Program.exe fails

Posted: 2021-Nov-09, 9:54 pm
by Rekrul
Simon Sheppard wrote: 2021-Nov-09, 5:02 pm You need to give the START command a title:

Code: Select all

start "anything you want" "c:\Program Files\Internet Download Accelerator\ida.exe" %URL%
I always thought that adding a title was optional.

To be honest, I don't know if I've ever tried to use Start with both a path and filename before. Most of the time I'm either using it with another script in the current directory or a command that's in my path.

Re: START Program.exe works, START path\Program.exe fails

Posted: 2021-Nov-10, 5:46 pm
by Simon Sheppard
Always include a TITLE this can be a simple string like "My Script" or just a pair of empty quotes ""
According to the Microsoft documentation, the title is optional, but depending on the other options chosen you can have problems if it is omitted.
https://ss64.com/nt/start.html