I have a four programs that I use at work which I always start up first thing at the office, so instead of running them individually every time I wanted them to start up when Windows starts up, your first reaction like mine is to put them in the startup folder, the only problem is when I use my laptop at home I hardly ever start these programs up so I would then normally shut them down, which is too much hassle for me, I know its stupid, but it’s how I roll.

So my next instinct was to write a batch file that I can run when I need the applications running, so I came up with this on my first round:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Silverlight\sllauncher.exe" 2472441663.d.seesmic.com
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Digsby\Digsby.exe"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\communicator.exe"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\OUTLOOK.exe"

The only problem with is is that when it started up Skype, it would always wait for Skype to close down before continuing. So on to the Google machine and it took me a while to find other ways of starting up applications, but I finally came up with this final bat file:

C:
CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Silverlight\"
START sllauncher.exe 2472441663.d.seesmic.com

C:
CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone"
START Skype.exe

C:
CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\Digsby"
START Digsby.exe

C:
CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office Communicator\"
START communicator.exe

C:
CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\"
START OUTLOOK.exe

This version moves to each folder and uses the start command to start each exe. Now Skype doesn’t hold up my bat file.

Just a note, I have gotten a much faster start up time for each application using this script compared to manually starting the applications. Not sure why though.

Disclaimer:

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