osirisgothra

use choice.exe, or xcon.exe (or some other scripting tool) they work much better, and do checking, etc for you. CHOICE.EXE is distributed with almost all versions of windows (for some reason not with XP) -- newer versions like Vista, windows 7, and windows 8 as well as their server alter-egos (server 2008, 2012) all come with choice.exe and it is a lot easier to use that plus you don't have to worry about cleaning up environment variables, etc. If you go with XCON you can go even further by controlling disply of countdown/timeout, color, sound, cursor positioning, console window title, direct color palette control (windows vista or better) etc, etc...