Thank you for your reply and for trying to come up with a solution I updated the customers sqlite3 (in fact I had already tried re-installing SQLITE3 after the fault) Unfortunately, it did not solve the problem I tried a simple test with a text file test.sql just containing .Help the command line Sqlite3 <test.sql simply opened another window and displayed a command prompt However, I then typed .read test.sql and it did display the help menu So perhaps if there is or was a command line such as sqlite3 input.db /Read=Test.sql It would work and avoid the windows redirection - but I could not find a command-line option like this.