Script Launch Options

Most people know that they can launch a script by double-clicking it, running a command in a command-shell window, or dragging the script onto the command-shell window. But did you know you can use several other automated techniques to launch scripts? Those techniques include the following:

Table A provides some more details about these techniques, including their advantages and disadvantages. There's no single right technique for every script. You might even find that you'll want to use more than one technique for a script. For example, if you want to run a script remotely and locally, you might create two versions of that script—one that you launch as a remotely scheduled task and another that you launch as a locally scheduled task. You need to look at the script's requirements and your environment's limitations to make the best choice.

Ruling out techniques is often helpful when trying to determine the best approach. For example, if you have a script that does a lot of processing, you wouldn't want to launch it as a GPO computer-startup script because it would noticeably slow down the logon process for users. If a script is to run on PCs that are offline most of the time, you wouldn't want to launch the script as a remotely scheduled task because the PCs might not get a chance to run the script.