I have one problem and one question about using the shell command. Looking in books and the web I have not been able to find an answer yet. If somone could shed some light or point me in the right direction I would be greatly appreciate it.

Problem:
At the command prompt I can type: "ping PCName > c:\results.txt" and it creates the file results.txt and inserts the results in the text file. In my VB program I use the shell command and run: "ShellID = Shell("ping " & trim(txtpcname.text) & " > c:\results.txt", vbnormalfocus)" and the windows opens and closes with no txt file being created. I even have tried "PingIt = "Ping " & trim(txtpcname.text) & " > c:\results.txt"" then "Shell(PingIt, vbnormalfocus) " with the same results. When I get a screen capture of the windows it says, "Bad parameter >." So why does it work from the command prompt but not the shell command?

Questions:
When I run a shell command I get a number in the ShellID "ShellID = Shell("ping " & trim(txtpcname.text) & " > c:\results.txt", vbnormalfocus)". What is that number? Is it just a random number, or does the numbers have a meaning that I could use to test if it was successfull or not?

If you just want to get it working as in cmd, just copy paste code from here.

now you can use , and if you want to put it still in a file just


This post has been edited by m2s87: 26 Dec, 2006 - 04:22 PM

Thanks for the help!

The code works well for pinging and other simple commands. A couple of problems I have is that when I mapped to the computer I ping it worked great. But when I ran it again I failed to un-map the drive and it caused my computer to lock up. It also locked up when I tried to use the XCOPY command. Every time it locks up at the following line "bSuccess = ReadFile(hReadPipe, mybuff, Len(mybuff), bytesread, 0&)". Is there a better way to test if it was successfull or not? Or better way to bring back the error message?

Again thanks for the help!