Help! Need A Program Start/ Stop Timer.

I'm looking for a program that will automatically start and stop a PC application (play music) at desired times of the day. I have set up a computer for music and would like it start and stop at say 9 am and 5 pm without having to reset the program every day. I don't mind paying for a program like this but a free one would be preferred.

 

Might the Windows Scheduled Tasks work good enough? (But I'm not sure if that program exists in WinXP or Vista.)

 

It will start the program but not the music.

 

Oh yea, didn't think about that...
But maybe with a macro?

 

You need two scheduled tasks, one to start and one to stop.
c:\start.bat

Code:

@echo off
"C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" /Task:NowPlaying /prefetch:1 "C:\playlist.wpl"

(change C:\playlist.wpl to point to the real playlist file)

c:\stop.bat

Code:

@echo off
taskkill /im:wmplayer.exe /f

Then schedule start.bat to run at 9am, and stop.bat to run at 5pm.

 

batch file programming, is there ANYTHING it cant do?

 

Get your scheduled tasks and point it to the playlist if you are using Winamp, used it for years. And it shuts down too.

 

I'm setting up a computer for our local Chamber of Commerce to play music automatically. There is no one in the office during the weekends so they wanted and easy way to have the music come on with out having to go into the office in the morning to turn it on and then again at night to shut it down. They are using MediaMonkey right now as it is the only one they understand. Don't know much about batch files but will try that and see if I can get it running. Thanks for the help

 

I can get media player to start but it won't shut the program down. I used a blank file to get the music to stop but the program is still running. Any suggestions?

 

Compared to Linux shell scripting? 99% of the tasks (Batch can't do...)