I have some systems that patch over the weekend and restart at around 3 am Monday morning. Some of the systems are considered servers and have processes that run on that are required to be up and running prior to other systems COMING online, if they come up in the wrong order then applications on other machine with fail to work correctly until the app is terminated and the services are restarted.

Is there a way in dos to DETERMINE if a computer was rebooted/restarted due to a windows update? I was thinking that I could use this as a way to then ping the needed systems and then start the application in question.

Can't stager the restart period as it is a pushed domain policy. Thanks for your help ...

No code yet as for something LIKE this I wouldn't know where to start or what to look at. I would shut off automatic UPDATES and make this a manual process where you have control over when and which systems are up and down. I'd set the systems to download and prompt when they have new updates. Then manually do the task.

Only easy way to physically make a automated process in which systems will come up powered in a specific order would be to use a remote power controller and do some programming to pass instructions to the power controller.... a more advanced method would be to turn certain services off and back on in the specific order that they need to be back online sich as using the NET STOP and NET START commands for the service to start or stop such as SQL Database and Agent, so windows is up and running, but there is no conflict because the potentially conflicting service is stopped until ready to start. ( I had to go this route with some POS ( Point of Sale ) systems that have to come up in a specific order to handle the front end communications. The first system up would take the lanes, but only the MFS1 would handle membership, so the MFS1 had to come up first then there was time delay batches added at the startup on the MFS2 and LFS server/system to start the winpos service after 1 minute for the MFS2 when both MFS1 and MFS2 are BOOTED up at same time and like hardware start up speeds. The LFS then would come up to start the service last in the cashier office 3 minutes later.

I currently use these power controllers which are secure and allow for remote power management of devices, systems, servers, and anything you want to turn power off and on remotely up to a 15 amp maximum draw. ( I havent performed custom commands linked to batches or any macros with these, but noticed that you can cache the last command and resend the last command to these through IE, so if you can read in the cached event and store it, you can then add a pointer to that cached command and make this fully automated. )

http://www.digital-loggers.com/EPCR2.html

These power controllers are very simple to set up via a web interface built into them or you can also interface to them via serial connection and terminal session or via a modem if a remote location...you have to add modem connected through serial null cable to go modem terminal connection.

I bought 20 of these and got a price better than advertised due to quantity discount. I also had one that got indirectly hit by lightning over the LAN and they took it in and gave me a replacement so their support team is good.

Oh...and you will have to have your servers set to power back up upon power loss in BIOS for these power controllers to turn the system / servers back on.