Calling other EXE file

Hi everyone,

I am supposed to program a VB application that calls an EXE file (eg: an antivirus scanner program) when a user triggers this event (eg: at the click of a button in the application) after this user has logged into the application.

Then, the program should also detect the completion of the antivirus scanning and proceed further (*).

Is this possible to be done? Any ideas / suggestions, please?

(*) Read the last scan results from the antivirus scanner program's activity log file and then save all this info into a database - I'm currently working this out.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

u need to use shell command to open a exe file using vb..

Ok, I understand what you are saying, will work on that.
But how then, can the VB application detect that the antivirus scan has been completed?

Is this possible to be done?

i dont think it will be possible directly...but as per my best of knowledge each and every anti virus application will generate a log file ..by reading this,I think we can achive this task..

Yes, you are right. I can actually make use of the antivirus scan log file.

But the requirement is such that the antivirus scanning program is executed when the user has logged into the VB application. Then the VB application needs to detect the completion of the scanning activity before it can start reading the last scan results from a log file.

I've managed to get the last scan results from the log file, but can't seem to get the two earlier tasks done.

Any ideas?

I don't know if it's possible but maybe you can find a way to back up the log file with a new name that changes each time the program runs. Then you have a different program run to open the two log files that were created prior to the most recent. I wouldn't know how it would be done but it sounds almost feasible to me :P

Hi everyone,

I've just found out that there are two different antivirus scanning program versions. This leads to different activity log file (that contains the log of the scanning activity performed) name and path. We'll also have different antivirus scanning program's EXE file name and path.

So this is how the flow of the program should be:
1. When a user logs into this VB application, the program calls the antivirus scanning program's EXE file. The VB application also needs to firstly detect the Operating System (whether Win 98 or Win XP) used, because of the different antivirus scanning program version (2 different program versions) used. The EXE file for the different antivirus scanning program versions have different file name and path. The activity log file for the different antivirus scanning program version also have different file name and path. Once the OS is determined, the VB application should then return the appropriate file names and paths.

2. The VB application should be able to detect the completion of the scanning activity.

3. Then only can the VB application start reading the last scan results from the antivirus scanning program's activity log file, to be saved into the SQL Server database.

I've managed to do task 3. I do not know if tasks 1 and task 2 are possible to be carried out or not. I guess VB Shell commands need to be coded for tasks 1 and 2? How do I go about with it? Any ideas / suggestions?

Any help at all will be much appreciated. Thanks a lot..!