Running an External Program from Batch on Windows Server 2008R2 Failing

Hi,

I am trying to run an external program from a batch job and it is failing with this error message:

Ext. prog.: ERROR: Input redirection is not supported, exiting the process immediately.

Ext. prog.: External program terminated with exit code 1

The program I am trying to run is: timeout

This command works on the OS: timeout -t 30

I have setup the step to look like this:

Under External Program:

-Name: timeout

-Parameter: -t 30

I have also tried:

-Name: timeout -t -30

-Parameter:

I am running ECC 6.04 on top of Windows Server 2008R2 with SQL Server 2008R2.

When we were running in Server 2003 on ECC 6.0 I was able to use the Sleep program just fine in the same manner. I have found out that sleep is not available in server 2008. It was replaced with timeout.

After an update to EHP4 and moving to Windows Server 2008R2, Is there any pre-work that needs to be done on the SAP or Windows side before we can run external programs?

Thank you,

Neil