When you start an OS/2 Presentation Manager application from the prompt, the command processor does not normally wait for the application to finish before returning to the prompt. This default behavior allows you to continue your work at the prompt while the application is running. You can force CMD.EXE to wait for applications to finish before continuing by selecting the “Wait for Completion” option on the Options 2 page of the OPTION dialogs, with the ExecWait directive in the .INI file, or with the START command's /WAIT switch (you can also use START to control many other aspects of how your applications are started).

Regardless of the ExecWait setting, CMD.EXE always waits for applications which are run from batch files before continuing with subsequent commands in the batch file. To start an application from a batch file and continue with the batch file immediately, without waiting for the application to finish, use the START command (without the /WAIT switch).