I need a good site with info on how to create a batch file for beginners

Batch files are files filled with basic (some complex) DOS commands. Gather info about DOS commands and you can create your batch files from what you learn. Or simply ask for a bit of help on what you would like to do and some of the people here should be able to help.

merry thursday PCWilliam, exactly as johns said, batch files just are files with DOS commands in them. i am not going to post a url to help create batch files because that'll take away visits for computing.net since you can just ask here when you have a problem. however, here is a url that has all the currently available DOS commands. http://www.easydos.com/dosindex.html enjoy. peace. -santa

OK then I would like to create a batch file for the guys at work so that they can simply ping a server. But when you make a call to ping.exe it just flashes the command window briefly for a few seconds. I trust the solution is mind numbingly simple.

If you call the program from Start\run, or by double-clicking it, dos commands are executed, and when they are finished, they close the windows. This is typical behaviour, and it indeed is a problem when you have any script, which just shows something on screen (like ping). Just make the script like this: ============================================ @echo off ping servername pause ============================================ adding "pause" will wait on a key to press, which is what you need "@echo off" is just a command you should put in every batchfile, on the first line

thats great, thank you very much. This works well on W2K which is what I wanted. however I'm a little curious as to why this does not seem to work in WindowsXP (home). The cmd window stays open but with no text displayed.