I have encountered a bizarre problem which I've been completely unable to fathom: I have a small batch file which I've written to perform a certain job on the hard drive. Now it is my desire to have this batch file terminate itself when the job is finished, so, naturally, I conlcuded my text with the command 'exit'. When the file is run, however, the task is successfully completed, but the DOS window just hangs around on the screen, waiting for me to click the X box in the upper right to close it. I wrote the following batch this morning: echo off cls echo. echo Test File echo. exit The same result. The task (in this case displaying text) ran fine, but the program just stopped when it had finished instead of automatically exiting. Anyone have any ideas??? PS: Please answer by email only (smokingmirror@hotmail.com), as it's not always possible for me to get on these forums very much. Thanks.

Right click the batch file and under properties, program, choose 'close on exit' Sorry, if you can manage to check your email, you can find time to check your post - this is an open forum.

I always use cls to exit dos in windows but a shortcut works too with close on exit. TheGorx - Windows Help

Maybe I'm missing something here, but Gorx, how does the clear screen command exit a dos window? (Hey jboy!)

In this case the exit is not needed. Once the batch file completes its final command, then the program is finished and it will automatically exit. The exit command would be used if you need to quit the program prior to the final command. The real problem here is to close the DOS window which is done by the method that jboy described.

well there is exit and then there's close the window. my guess would be because it's still has text in the window the exit command isn't closing it just not making it active anymore. when you use the close on exit setting it will create a PIF file

I have several batch files all of which have cls as the last line. The "close window on exit" is not ticked. They all close fine. Derek