How to capture the PID of a process when launching it from command line?

Question

Is there a way to do this purely in a .bat file?

The purpose is to launch iexplore.exe, then kill just that instance when it\'s finished.

Answer 1

For some reason your approach of getting process id did not work for me, but since I'm expert in batches, I've coded my own approach, attaching here:

@echo off

call:AsyncCmd
rem call:AsyncCmd "echo hello world"
rem call:AsyncCmd "call build.bat"
exit /b

rem ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rem Starts asynchronous command execution 
rem %1 is command, if empty - only aborts existing build.
rem ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
:AsyncCmd
if exist %~dp0SetupBuild_Completed.txt (
    del /f %~dp0SetupBuild_Pid.txt >nul 2>&1
    del /f %~dp0SetupBuild_Completed.txt >nul 2>&1
)

if not exist %~dp0SetupBuild_Pid.txt goto lStartProc
    rem --------------------------------------------------
    rem Abort build process
    rem --------------------------------------------------
    set /p pid=<%~dp0SetupBuild_Pid.txt
    echo Cancelling setup build process, process id %pid%
    pskill -t %pid%
    del /f %~dp0SetupBuild_Pid.txt >nul 2>&1

:lStartProc
if "%~1" == "" exit /b 0

rem --------------------------------------------------
rem Starts asyncronous build process
rem --------------------------------------------------
set dir=%~dp0
set dir=%dir:~0,-1%
for /f "tokens=2 delims==; " %%a in ('wmic process call create "cmd /c mincon.exe && %~1 && echo 1>%~dp0SetupBuild_Completed.txt"^, "%dir%" ^| findstr /r "ProcessId"') do set pid=%%a
echo Setup build started, process id: %pid%
echo %pid%>%~dp0SetupBuild_Pid.txt
exit /b 0