Help with Task Scheduler

Question

How can I use Task Scheduler to trigger an event, such as starting a specific program, only when another program is starting or has started? For instance, I have an application that runs at startup (a password manager) and a second app that needs that PW manager. Can someone provide some useful tips to help me solve this issue?

Answer 1

Hello,

You may create a bat file, below is the example, kindly change your variable in the bold text.

Function of the script is to start second.exe until your first.exe is running.

@echo off

:CheckFirstRunning

tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq first.exe" 2>NUL | find /I /N "first.exe">NUL

if "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="0" (

echo first.exe is running.

start "" second.exe

) else (

echo first.exe is not running. Waiting for it to start...

timeout /t 5 /nobreak >nul

goto CheckFirstRunning

)

Answer 2

You can have the task scheduler run a Powershell script that looks for a program and when it detects it, it can launch another program.

Here is an example that looks for notepad to be launched.

while ($true) {
    if ((Get-Process notepad -ea SilentlyContinue).count -gt 0) {
        "Got him."
        break
    }
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
}
Start-Process Your-Other-Program.exe