I am trying to start the default application for a file, wait for it to complete, and then continue with my batch file. The problem is that start, when used below simply creates another command prompt window with the example.doc in the title bar. I can use call instead of start, but then call does not wait for the program to finish before going to the next line. It appears that start needs to have an executable name and will not work with the default application system in windows.

Any ideas how I can make this happen without having to hardcode the windows application in the batch file as well?

```
set filename=example.doc
start /wait %filename%
copy %filename% %filename%.bak

```