How to use /k to keep a command prompt shortcut from closing?

Question

I am trying to make a shortcut that will run the following command with the following switches. The window closes before the command can run long enough. I want to know where to put the /k in the target box of the shortcut to keep the windows from closing. (I think it is /k but maybe its something else).

ping XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX -t -l 25565

My target field looks like this:

"C:\Windows\System32\PING.EXE" /k 10.98.56.1 -t -I 25565

But I don't know where the /k is supposed to go (if it is /k). can someone rewrite this with the correct syntax for me?

Answer 1

The /k parameter needs to be passed to the terminal process (cmd.exe). So, your shortcut should look like this:

%COMSPEC% /k C:\Windows\System32\PING.EXE XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX -t -I 25565

Note: %COMSPEC% will resolve to cmd.exe

Answer 2

The /k argument you mentioned is for cmd.exe, not ping. So you have to call:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k "c:\windows\system32\ping.exe" -t -I 255 192.168.1.1

The -t argument specifies that you'll ping until cancelled, and the -I parameter specifies a TTL (Time-To-Live). The maximum value of this field is 255 per TCP specification.

Before I realized the /k argument was for cmd.exe, I wrote this answer out using batch files. It might be informative and it's just another way to get the job done, so I'll leave that in case it's worthwhile.

---

Batch file example 1:

@ECHO OFF
ping -t -I 255 %1
pause
exit

Then you could call that batch file with the shortcut:

"c:\folder\batchfile.bat" 192.168.1.1

Of course you'd substitute the drive, folder, batch file name, and IP address.

You could also batch a series of pings using a structure like this:

@echo off
:loop
cls
ping -n 10 -I 255 %1
timeout 5
goto :loop

Which uses the -n argument to ping 10 times, then does a timeout for 5 seconds before starting over with another batch of 10.