Simultaneous Program launch and close

[momo2010]

Hi, I am very very new to this and to be quite frank don't know what I'm doing.

What I want to do is launch two pieces of software simultaneously and close them simultaneously. xbox media center and xpadder

So when I open xbox media center xpadder opens and when I close xbmc, xpadder closes.

I know this is easily achievable with autoit, but I just dont know what to do.

Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.

Many thanks in advance, MOMO2010

[omikron48]

ProcessExist, Run and ProcessClose?

[momo2010]

Ok, let me reword it, I have no idea what I am doing.

A more detailed suggestion would be very appreciated.

I dont know how to lay it out in the script. Could you possibly post an example using two random software examples.

Again, I want the script to open the two programs together and close them together upon launching the XBMC

Thanks

[Melba23]

momo2010,

First, welcome to the AutoIt forums.

When you post here it always helps if you have had a go at solving your problems beforehand. Having some code to work on is a great help - and no-one here is too keen to help the "code it for me" brigade.

Think of the old saying: "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; give a man a net and you feed him forever". We try to be net makers and repairers, not fishmongers.

Reading the Help file (at least the first few sections - Using AutoIt, Tutorials and the first couple of References) will help you enormously. You should also look at the excellent tutorials that you will find here and here. There are even video tutorials on YouTube if you prefer watching to reading.

I know you want to start coding NOW, but a little study will save you a lot of trouble later on, believe me.

However, it is too wet to play golf - so you are in luck! You need something like this - obviously you will have to use the correct values for the 2 processes involved:

; Start an infinite loop
While 1
    ; If the XBMC process starts
    If ProcessExists("XBMC.exe") Then
        ; Start the xpadder
        Run("xpadder.exe")
        ; Exit the infinite loop
        ExitLoop
    EndIf
    
WEnd

; Start another infinite loop
While 1
    ; If the XBMC process is closed
    If Not ProcessExists("XBMC.exe") Then
        ; Close the xpadder process
        ProcessClose("xpadder.exe"
        ; Exit the script
        Exit
    EndIf
    
WEnd

But as Sir Percy Ware-Armitage said to Courtney* - "Do not expect treats like this every day!"

M23

* In this film.

[momo2010]

I can't say thank you enough. I had given it a go myself and read through some different tutorials, but I thought that whatever I could come up with would only proove a hindrance to those trying to help me. Judging by what you have posted for me I was heading in the right direction, but it would have taken me about 10 hours to get there, much like the LOTR trilogy. Okay, not as good a movie reference as yours, but thought I'd reciprocate your effort.

Once again many thanks, and I'll be using this as a launching pad to learn for myself. When such basic elements of the software can produce such big results I think i would be foolish not to invest further time in seeing what i can really get out of it.

MOMO