Is it possible to launch 2 programs via a shortcut?

I'm mostly interested in Windows and I'd like to know if it's possible to launch 2 separate programs via one shortcut, and have the other one reflect the shortcut.

Think about Windows 7 taskbar. I want to have a shortcut there that launches one program first, then it starts another program after that which reflects the state of the shortcut icon (running/not running) on the taskbar.

I am trying to create a launcher that launches a dependency service first, and 开发者_运维百科then launch another program. The another program can't launch the service because it heavily depends on it. I'd like to be able to have a shortcut icon in Win7 taskbar, and if it points to the launcher, then the shortcut icon does not reflect the actual program, but instead the launcher. If the shortcut is for the actual program, then there's no shortcut to start the launcher.

I wouldn't want to have two shortcuts.

If anyone is interested what I am doing, I am trying to run NodeJS on the machine locally, and have a web app served as a desktop app using Chrome application shortcut functionality.

Create a batch file and refer to the following link to check if the 1st process is running or not before you launch the 2nd program.

Inside a batch file, how can I tell whether a process is running?

You can create a shortcut to the batch file on the taskbar and even change its icon...