I have a script that loads an excel file from some link, and then writes some information from the excel file to a text file. I set up a task on Task Scheduler to run the script and then email the text file, and it works fine while logged on. It does not, however, run while the computer is locked.
Unfortunately, I need the task to be run in the early morning before I get to work. Is there any way to make this work?
Unfortunately I don't think this is possible. This link HERE contains someone with a similar situation that was solved by making the computer "lock" via custom vbscript. However this is not the traditional "Lock" of a computer and actually just disables and removes a bunch of things... Further down they mention it being possible but it's very limited on what can happen... and making windows active is one of the limitations.
Related
I'm creating a Windows event log-clearing software.
Whenever you clear logs from the command-line, there are always a few logs that can't be cleared, because either newer versions of Windows don't use the services those logs were meant for anymore, or they are important system logs that are almost always being written to.
However, when the Windows event utility tool finds out it can't clear those logs, it relays an error message to the user. And because I'm trying to make this Batch file into an actual software, I would rather not have a bunch of messy error messages on the screen, for the sake of the user experience.
The obvious answer to this problem would be to have the batch file start a separate background batch script to clear the logs, where the user wouldn't see any error messages, but modern-day anti-virus really don't like batch scripts, and flag them almost every time, so I can't do that.
I tried to instead create a powershell script (Much more trusted by anti-virus.) to clear the logs. But because of the nature of powershell, even if it runs completely in the background, without a console, it still relays error messages in the form of VBS XMessages.
If it's any useful, here's the two lines of code in the powershell script:
wevtutil el | Foreach-Object {wevtutil cl "$_"}
exit
And for those who are wondering, yes, I am clearing logs with administrative privileges.
I need one of the following:
Another way to clear Windows event logs, that doesn't show error messages, that I can integrate into the software I'm creating.
A way to forcefully clear those Windows event logs that normally can't be cleared.
A way to have a batch script run without anti-virus having a stroke.
A way to make the powershell script run completely in the background, without event displaying error messages.
To any who happened to stumble upon this question, the answer is in the comments section, as credit goes to #vonPryz, who mentioned that Clear–EventLog would work better than wevtutil, and it does.
please keep in mind throughout this that I am quite new to windows automation and powerShell so go easy on me please. My goal was to create an automatic USB cloner in order to copy files if the drive has a specific name. I've sorted the copying and the name thing in powerShell and batch. Now remember the goal is to have the script running 24/7, based on a lot of reading up on this it would seem that Windows Task Scheduler is the Ideal way to do this. So I set up a task where the action is running the powerShell and the trigger is "At log on of any user" (I am the only user anyway). This is all well and good however when I log off and back in to test it, It doesn't work. I investigated and it turns out in Task Scheduler, for the usbClone task the status says "Ready" as opposed to "Running" (which is what it should be). Also I have ticked the "Enabled" button on the trigger. For reference my OS is Windows 10. If there is a flaw in my logic (I wouldn't be surprised) please explain, other than that it should be a simple "run this script on log on" task yet it isn't working. I should also point out that if I manually right click the task and click "Run" it runs just fine. Any help would be much appreciated
EDIT: Please read comments to see what steps I have already taken based on suggestion.
Thanks in advance,
Fane
How can I start my program automatically if it crashes on windows 2003 server? Sometimes my program just crashes, is there a way in windows or settings that I can set?
There are several ways to create a process supervisor/guardian process on Windows.
First, is to leverage windows command line capabilities. Create a bat file:
#echo off
:start
start /w "your app to watch.exe"
goto start
start /w will wait for the process to exit. When the process crashes and exits, the bat script will relaunch it.
Another option is to use free supervisor tool https://github.com/chebum/Supervisor. It allows to restart the crashed app, plus it allows to monitor two or more apps at once and it will automatically close these apps when supervisor's window is closed.
The usual approach is to run what is known as a guardian process. This is a separate process, often a service, that monitors the state of the main process. When the guardian detects that the main service has died, it re-spawns it.
To the very best of my knowledge, there is not built in Windows functionality to do this for you.
Notice: running self-looping bat files can be useful, but unless you know what you're doing, they can wreak all kinds of havoc. This goes especially if you run them on startup. You have been warned.
Anyway. I just remembered something from my 286 days, when I played around a lot with BAT files. If you write the file
yourprogram.exe
some other event
the BAT file will run yourprogram, and then pause and wait around in the background until the program exits. After that it will run "some other event". This used to be kind of annoying if you wanted to run multiple things at once, but here it's actually useful. Using this, it's possible to make it run a loop that restarts the program (and reruns the bat file) as soon as it exits. Combine this with https://superuser.com/questions/62525/run-a-completly-hidden-batch-file, and you'll never even see it happening.
The final BAT file ("restart.bat" in this example) will look something like:
c:\[location]\yourprogram.exe
wscript "C:\[location]\invisible.vbs" "C:\[location]\restart.bat"
That's about it. Start the program (on startup via task or even just startup folder) with line 2, and this ought to solve your problem :)
Oh, if you want to stop the loop, just rename the bat file or put "// " in front of the two lines, save it, and exit the program.
If the program you are running requires admin rights, the solution I found was using psexec (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx) to run both the program and the bat with elevated privileges. In that case the BAT will look like:
c:\[location]\psexec -h c:\[location]\yourprogram.exe
c:\[location]\psexec -h wscript "C:\[location]\invisible.vbs" "C:\[location]\restart.bat"
Then you run the bat as administrator, or run the second line (without the psexec part) from task scheduler with elevated privileges. BEWARE: running it as a normal user and clicking "no" on the UAC prompt gave me a BSOD, probably because it looped "can't run program because of lacking privileges" a couple of billion times or something :)
You can use RegisterApplicationRestart.
"If you register for restart and the application encounters an
unhandled exception or is not responsive, the user is offered the
opportunity to restart the application; the application is not
automatically restarted without the user's consent. "
For automatic restart without user intervention, there is also RestartOnCrash. Works with all Windows versions.
I was looking for something similar. There are two options to handle this - either you can write a small script by yourself or use something that is already existing.
After some googling I came across this nice list. The blogger has compiled about 8 tools to automatically restart a crashed or closed application.
Unfortunately there are no settings in Windows to automatically restart a regular program when it crashes.
Do you need to actively interact with your application's GUI? Some of the Service Wrappers (designed to run any application as a Windows Service) will monitor your application and restart it when it fails, but be sure investigate Session 0 Isolation to ensure that it won't get in the way.
You may use some special app like BDV SystemEvents or any other. It allows you to specify application which will be started if some another application is closed. Specify the same application as a Condition and as an Action and you will get expected results.
I am trying to write a non-interactive process that prints PDFs, and I need advice on how to build this on Windows Server 2008 (and Vista/7).
Previously, we have had a scheduled task (set to run whether the user account was logged on or not) that would print all PDFs inside of a directory. (A seperate process would move the PDFs into the directory.) At runtime, this would spin up another process (either Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader) to print the PDF. Both Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader feature silent printing, so everything would be sent to the default printer for the user that the scheduled task ran as. No UI was ever generated, and all files would be printed without a hitch. This worked on Server 2003.
The process no longer works on Server 2008. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe this has to do with Session 0 Isolation. I cannot prove this. However, I can say that the process works as a scheduled task when set as "Run only when the user is logged in". Now, while this works, it forces a user to log in to the machine, and thus does not fulfill my requirements. (My first clue was in this previous question.)
I cannot determine how I can move forward on this. Is there any way to fulfill my requirements?
A few notes :
Every solution I've seen seems to be using the credentials of a logged-in user. See the question I linked above - the solution listed appears to be grabbing the token of a logged-in user and using it to run the program. (Look at the GetCurrentUserToken() procedure - the returned value is later used in the API call CreateProcessAsUser().)
My current process generates, as near as I can tell, no UI. I've verified, using ProcMon, that the reader process (Adobe or Foxit) appears to print correctly and the print driver itself appears to have a problem. This is backed up by an attempt to use a print-to-file driver - the print-to-file driver runs in three visible steps and clearly finishes the first for all files without starting the second. So how does Session 0 Isolation affect the printer driver? This is unclear to me. (The best documentation I can find on the subject only mentions that printer drivers may be affected, even though the print spooler runs in Session 0.)
Printing as a Windows service never works, even when the process has 'Allow service to interact with desktop' checked.
Bold text added to counter the blear-inducing wall-of-text effect.
Try using Foxit Reader instead of Acrobat-Reader.
Foxit Reader supports GUI-less / commandline execution properly, also in Windows 2008 and above!
Printing is also possible, but you will have to add (or check) the printer in session0 every time you run the printjob.
If you need any more help on that, just ask again. I already built a powershell script which runs in task scheduler to print pdf-files with help of Foxit Reader.
I have two problems with Windows Task Manager:
One, I have a Python script that sends an email notification, through gmail, at the end of the run. This works fine when I run the script itself, but when I run the script through Windows Task Scheduler, the script runs fine, but does not send an email. Why would this happen?
Two, when running the same script through task scheduler on a remote desktop, when I am logged in, but my session is closed, firefox will not open.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
The Task manager doesn't display any GUI for the current user.
You need to be login as system.
A similar thing happened with me ( while using PHP ) and I found out the reason that I had put a relative path to a file to be included in the code.
include("./lib/libfile.php");
Later when I replaced it with the absolute path it worked all right.
include("D://code/lib/libfile.php");
You might have a similar problem.
It could be that you need to specify where it starts in. This is important if you make local references in your program. This would also result in your program running fine, but not doing everything it is built to do.
Inside task scheduler, see "Actions", then edit an action. It's the parameter it says is optional.