Hi guys, I just came across an old email and once (or twice) a while back had commented on just creating a simple bat file to start everything up you want started when you're ready to go simming. I do this often and it is nice convenient thing to have. It also cuts all your FS(X) shorcuts down to one with some exceptions.What mine does:I smoke cigerettes and only smoke outside. When I return I like to have everything loaded and waiting for me without needing to wait for one program to start or wait for another to get to a certain point before I launch the next. To fix this, I just create a short bat file.A bat file is short for a batch file. A batch file is a text file containing a series of commands. For our needs we just want things to start at certain times on their own.One thing about bat files is some OS's treat the commands different so I am only going to cover one way that should work for everyone and every OS. There are lots of way to do this but again, I am going to explain it so everyone can do it (hopefully).Follow these step:

• For starters, first gather shortcuts for all the things you want your bat file to start and put them all in a folder.
• Rename all the shortcuts something simple just enough to know what they are (no spaces). Example: ASE, RC4, fsx, TR5.
• Put the folder on the root of your C:\
• Name it whatever you want but for simplistic reasons and again since OS's handle spaces many different ways, just make it one word or connect them with an underscore "_". I named mine "my_bat".
• Create a text file on your desktop and again, call it whatever you'd like, I named mine FSX.
• Copy the contents of what I have here in this code box to your text file.

start C:\my_bat\ase.lnkping -n 95 127.0.0.1start C:\my_bat\tr5.lnkping -n 5 127.0.0.1start C:\my_bat\RC4.lnkstart C:\my_bat\fsx.lnkREM start C:\my_bat\program I no longer want to start.lnk

• Looking at your shortcuts (and folder name), you may need to rename these, but if you are using shortcuts like me, make sure to keep the .lnk.
• In the text file you created, click File>Save As and keep the name but at the end put .bat (You do not need to have show file extensions on to do this).
• Test it out, you may be done :) If not, see below for more info.

More info:If you have yours exactly like mine and have the same addons and renamed the short cuts as I listed then you should be good to go, or you may have more you want to start this way. If so, just add them where you want them to start but also do the steps above by putting their shortcut in the folder and renaming the shortcut as I explained.To explain how this works for me, and what the whole ping is for is quite simple.

• First ASE is launched.
• The next command is "ping -n 95 127.0.0.1"
  • What that is doing is just pinging the local host (your computer) an X number of times.
  • In my case it will do it 95 times before moving on to the next command in the list.
  • The reason for this is you may have an app that needs to wait until another loads first.
  • Or you might just want x amount of seconds to finish something before having it on screen.
  • Ping is just one way to do a "Sleep" command with a simple bat file that I use. I could do it with Visual Basic or Ruby but then I would need to have people download things that aren't neccasary to get the same results.
  • I prefer not to personally and besides this is much easier I think.

  [*]Once the timer finishes, it launches my Track IR 5.[*]Once again it goes into a ping for 5 seconds

  • Ping actually isn't exactly seconds and is actually a bit slower but you get the idea.
  • There really is no reason to have it wait 5 seconds here but I wanted to show you the format and differences.

  [*]Next up you'll see it launches Radar Contact 4 and FSX almost as if they were launched at the same exact time.

  • This can cause programs to crash although extremely rare which may be another reason to use a ping timer for even just 1 ping.
  • If you had 100 things listed you would see them all start very very fast which is one of the great things about a bat file.
  • One thing to run and everything you want loaded.

Looking at the end line you will see "REM start C:\my_bat\program I no longer want to start.lnk"The first three letters are REM for Remark. The bat file will skip anything with REM so it basically remarks out as // does in the FSX.CFG and Aircraft.cfg.I use REM to remove things rather than delete them since I still have the shortcut in place I may later decide to reenable it, so all I need to do is remove the REM and away it goes.My bat file is actually much longer than the above but doesn't do anything different and this should be enough for whoever wants a simple type of macro of sorts to just quickly launch everything you want.Any one can create a bat file and add as much as you want. If you only start up FS and go, well you don't need this haha, but if you have lots of things like I do then this should come in very handy.

Nice, thanks Dan. I haven't programed batch files in years, but there used to be this Windows 2003 Resource Kit with a sleep function and many other utilities you might find useful if you like messing with this stuffI'm definitely going to do this. Got my TrackIR set to run on startup and I always forget to shut it down so it gets unnecessarily hot when I'm not simming

Thanks Dario, Thanks for the tip, but I just wanted to list it in a way everyone can do it and in under 5 minutes (for them). So no downloads or anything etc.. etc... I could do the same thing with VB but for what most people would use this for, it's a bit overkill, just to do sleep would be something like this:

echo wscript.sleep 20000 > temp.vbsstart /wait temp.vbs

Plus it leaves a trail of temp files and again is pointless for this.Now if I really wanted to show people some stuff I would have them download Ruby and Watir, but it's been a while and it is way overkill haha.

Of course, much better to keep things simple. I will be using your ping solution for this actually. Thanks again

What I really wish I knew, was how to run the dos box minimized,,, I think it was a -m or something like that. Any ideas?

just make a shortcut to the .bat file and set it to start minimized heheEDIT: or do you mean from the batch file itself? if so it's start /min

I'm talking about just the dos box.

Ok, then create a shortcut to it, then right click the shortcut and go to properties. pick "minimized" in the "run" combo.Use the shortcut instead of the batch file to start FSX and the shell will start minimized

That'll work, thanks Dario.So if people don't want to see the dos box, just add these steps and you won't have to look at the dos box.One thing I would do is move your bat file to your new folder, at least if you're like me and want to keep your desktop free of unwanted clutter. Then do as Dario stated above.If you want the applications also to start minimized then add the /min in front of the ones that you want minimized too. In this example I Only set TR5 and RC4 to minimize since it appears not to work if the program takes a long time to start and will have no effect on ASE or FSX.

start C:\my_bat\ase.lnkping -n 95 127.0.0.1start /min C:\my_bat\tr5.lnkping -n 5 127.0.0.1start /min C:\my_bat\RC4.lnkstart C:\my_bat\fsx.lnkREM start C:\my_bat\program I no longer want to start.lnk

Hey what a great idea, thanks Dan.Come to think of it I already use the FPS limiter tool which has a .bat file so I'll see if I can add the prog's. that I would like started to that. Too bad that I don't smoke, not sure what I'm going to do with the extra time from now on.