Yes, you can run a Windows batch file without a command prompt. However, you will need to be sure that the batch file is properly written and that it does not contain any sensitive information.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
The Question
SuperUser reader Jake wants to run a BAT file invisibly, he writes:
Is there a solution for Jake’s stealthy prompt desire?
I found a Redcar.bat file which is meant to launch Redcar as a shortcut, I presume, but I don’t want the extra command prompt window to open whenever I launch the BAT file.
How do I just run the BAT without seeing the prompt?
The Answers
SuperUser contributor Afrazier responds with a combination of bad and good news:
Readers also pointed him to another SuperUser thread that highlights how you can use a Visual Basic Script to go beyond minimizing the visibility and outright hide the CMD prompt. In that thread, Harry MC explains:
What you can do is take steps to make sure that the batch file exits as quickly as possible. If at all possible, modify the batch file to run whatever program with the start command. By default, start returns immediately without waiting for the program to exit, so the batch file will continue to run and, presumably, exit immediately. Couple that with modifying your shortcut to run the batch file minimized, and you’ll only see the taskbar flash without even seeing a window onscreen.
One caveat to this is that if you’re running a console-mode program, which many script interpreters are, the batch file will wait for the program to exit, and using start will spawn a new console window. What you need to do in this case is run the Windows-based version of the interpreter instead of the console-based one — no start necessary. For Perl, you would run wperl.exe instead of perl.exe. For Python, it’s pythonw.exe instead of python.exe. The old win32 Ruby distribution I have downloaded has rubyw.exe, which should do the same thing.
A final possibility is to use a 3rd-party tool to run the command prompt with a hidden window. I’ve heard of such things but never had a use for them, so I don’t know of anything in particular to point you to.
Employing any of the above solutions, based on your comfort level using VBS and third party tools or not, will at minimum reduce the visibility of the CMD window or outright remove it.
Save this one line of text as file invisible.vbs:
CreateObject(“Wscript.Shell”).Run “””” & WScript.Arguments(0) & “”””, 0, False
To run any program or batch file invisibly, use it like this:
wscript.exe “C:\Wherever\invisible.vbs” “C:\Some Other Place\MyBatchFile.bat”
To also be able to pass-on/relay a list of arguments use only two double quotes
CreateObject(“Wscript.Shell”).Run “” & WScript.Arguments(0) & “”, 0, False
eg: Invisible.vbs “Kill.vbs ME.exe”
Solution 2:
Use a command line tool to silently launch a process : Quiet.
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