Easiest language to produce a Windows executable to prefix running another executable with system calls?

I want to run some system commands (to fix things) before running an executable. I have a reasonably locked down (work) Windows XP system and so can't change what a shortcut points to. For my users' convenience, I must keep the same shortcut. However, I am able to swap out the .exe (renaming) and potentially replace it with another .exe (of the same name) which runs my system commands and then runs the original .exe.

What would be the easiest and开发者_StackOverflow中文版 quickest language/compiler to do this in? Previously, I've done this sort of thing in C (and tried it today in Python using py2exe without much success). Preferably free solutions.

---

Visual C# 2008 Express Edition is

• free
• comes with a compiler
• outputs exes
• C# is a good choice if you have C experience
• .net currently is the "canonical" Windows platform