I have a batch file that I use every time I start my work PC. Basically, it kills all the bloatware that the IT department puts on the PC that run as my user account that I never even use using taskkill, installs a small program, then loads all the programs I actually need at once. Problem is, one of the programs that I run, the IT department recently thought it would be helpful to install a "helper" program to automate some things within the program that I already know how to do and can do it fairly quickly manually. Problem is, the helper program actually has the reverse effect and slows the actual program down. We are of course complaining to IT about it but it'll probably take them months to fix it, if ever. In the meantime, I found out that the helper program runs as it's own process under my user account, which means I can kill it, and everything runs smoothly again. Problem is, how the program runs. I launch the program normally and this happens:
Process A loads. Process A loads process B. Process A kills itself. Process B loads process C. Process C loads process D, E, and F (the helper programs). Process B kills itself, while leaving C, D, E, and F in memory (program is fully loaded at this point)
How can I have the batch file just wait for process B to kill itself, before proceeding with the taskkill commands to kill processes D, E, and F? Since the command line only sees process A when directly calling the EXE, it resumes the batch file in under a second since A kills itself that quickly. I can't just use timeout or some other generic time waster because the load time of the program is too volatile, what with network issues, program updates, etc.
Thanks guys, I actually took Ruslan's answer and simplified and changed it a bit. This works great. Waits for exe3 to load since it's the last one to load, then kills all 3. Didn't need to set the variables so removed those and completely forgot about putting it in a loop.
:start
FOR /F %%x IN ('tasklist /NH /FI "IMAGENAME eq exe3.exe"') DO IF %%x == exe3.exe goto found
goto start
:found
taskkill /f /fi "blah1.exe"
taskkill /f /fi "blah2.exe"
taskkill /f /fi "blah3.exe"