[Joe Forster/STA]

This is the Unix bg command. It moves processes to the background - hence the name -, disconnecting their output from the console.

A more useful utility would be one that can launch command lines in the background. Try the built-in "start" command of Windows, with the options "/b" and "/min" and process priority, although it's not much. I use something like this when I want to compress multiple EXE's in the same directory with UPX.

None of these can synchronize the subprocesses, that is, make sure that exactly N subprocesses run at the same time and when one of them finishes, only then does the next one start.