How to sleep for five seconds in a batch file/cmd [duplicate]

Answer 1

Can't we do waitfor /T 180?

waitfor /T 180 pause will result in "ERROR: Timed out waiting for 'pause'."

waitfor /T 180 pause >nul will sweep that "error" under the rug

The waitfor command should be there in Windows OS after Win95

In the past I've downloaded a executable named sleep that will work on the command line after you put it in your path.

For example: sleep shutdown -r -f /m \\yourmachine although shutdown now has -t option built in

Answer 2

Two answers:

Firstly, to delay in a batch file, simply without all the obtuse methods people have been proposing:

timeout /t <TimeoutInSeconds> [/nobreak] 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754891.aspx

Secondly, worth mentioning that while it may not do exactly what you want, using the inbuilt Windows snipping tool, you can trigger a snip on it without using the mouse. Run the snipping tool, escape out of the current snip but leave the tool running, and hit Control + Print Screen when you want the snip to occur. This shouldn't interfere with whatever it is you're trying to snip.

Answer 3

You can make it with timeout:

This will be visible: timeout 5

This will not be visible timeout 5 >nul

Answer 4

This should do the trick: choice /T 5 /N /D Y

Replace the 5 with the time in seconds you want to wait...

Answer 5

I think the following command can help:

pause 5

The syntax of the pause command is: pause d \\where d represents the duration in seconds

I am using Windows 7 (32 bit), but I don't know about the others.

Answer 6

One hack is to (mis)use the ping command:

ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 > nul

Explanation:

• ping is a system utility that sends ping requests. ping is available on all versions of Windows.
• 127.0.0.1 is the IP address of localhost. This IP address is guaranteed to always resolve, be reachable, and immediately respond to pings.
• -n 6 specifies that there are to be 6 pings. There is a 1s delay between each ping, so for a 5s delay you need to send 6 pings.
• > nul suppress the output of ping, by redirecting it to nul.