I want to run powershell script every day and want to use task scheduler for it. But I have to be log in because this srcipt runs cisco vpn client and putty and then runs some python script for one minute. I don't want it to interrupt my work (because it swichs to different vpn etc.) so I set up time to run this task to 2:00 AM and check "run asap after a scheduled start is missed" to make sure that this task will run every morning after I turn on my computer.
But the problem is, that it doesn't run the script after turn on PC and it says event id 332 - Launch condition not met, user not logged-on. I think I understand this problem, it tries to run this script right after start up so at time I'm not log in. But why does not the task try it after 1 minute again up to 3 times? (see below)
What shoud I do to make sure that it will run every day after turn on PC but only once a day (sometimes I need to restart my PC so I don't want it to run again)
There is my task configuration:
Check the 'Run whether the user is logged on or not' and 'Run with highest privilege' options.it will work for you.
We're using a scheduled task to run a simple executable every 2 minutes, it has a working directory set (no quotes round the path) but other than that most options are left as defaults.
Running the task manually by right-clicking on it and selecting Run works just fine, however it never executes automatically. When the time comes to run the task, it just increments the "Next Run Time" field by 2 minutes and that's it. The Last Run Time Field is always the last time the task was manually executed.
The Last Run Result is always 0x0.
I've tried setting it to run as the current user, or as an alternate user set up with administrative privileges and a stored password, but still no luck.
There doesn't appear to be anything immediately obvious in the system event log either to indicate the cause of the failure.
As a bit of background, this is a headless Win10 Pro machine (only ever accessed via LogMeIn) running control software for external hardware. It reboots every morning at 03:00 and since it's on an physically isolated network, automatically logs in to a user account with administrative privileges and no password.
I suspect it may be a permissions issue with the insecure way the system is set up, however at this point there's little to go on.
Any ideas?
Thanks
For posterity, this turned out to be an issue with the way the repetition on the scheduled task was set up. Initially it was set up as a daily task to run every 2 minutes for 24 hours. Whilst this showed the correct next run time in the task scheduler window, for some reason it never executed - Bug?
The fix was instead to set the task up as a one time event that repeats every 2 minutes indefinitely, which seems to be working properly now.
I want to run a backup twice a day, but I'm unable to make assumptions on when the computer is turned on. As an example: If I create a task in the task scheduler to run a backup script at 9 AM and 9 PM, I have no guarantee that the backup will run, since the computer might be powered on at 10 AM and shutdown at 8 PM.
Is there an easy way to specify a time window in which a backup should take place within the windows task scheduler?
Not really.
The easiest way to handle it is to tell the users to never shut it down. Admittedly that's not terribly useful depending on your environment.
You can scheduled a job to run on startup or on logon. That would theoretically catch your 9 AM window.
The hard one would be the 9PM backup. You may be able to use the "Wake the computer to run this task" option on the Conditions tab depending on your power settings. You could, theoreticlaly, use GPEdit.MSC to set a shutdown script to run the backup when the system is shutdown. But that has it's own special set of issues depending on if the backup location is local or remote. Additionally this method has the potential of users thinking the shutdown is taking too long and killing power.
So my situation is that I am running an app on the Windows Task Scheduler. This app is run once a day at 1pm. the app does some queries and transfers data to an FTP site. All that is working great except on the weekends when i am not here the app is run and the GUI is still displayed for me to review. This seems to make it stop running on the scheduler until I shut down the app. So on Saturday it will run and the app will remain displayed for me to review when I get back on Monday. but on Sunday when the scheduler attempts to run it again it will fail because the app has not been closed down.
First let me confirm that this is how the Task Scheduler is supposed to work. Second, what are my alternatives for scheduling to run every day and keep the GUI displayed so that I can review. The app can run multiple times as each session does not interfere with the other sessions. So if I'm gone for a week on vacation I would expect that when i get back that 7 instances of the app have been run and are waiting for my review.
Thanks
AGP
Your best bet is to eliminate the UI and log messages to the Event Log or a log file. The UI could be spawned from the CLI as a separate process if you prefer, but it should be done so in as its own non-child process.
Alternatively, you could run a batch file instead of the process directly. In the batch file, invoke "START path_to_exe" instead of the EXE. That will cause the batch file to "finish" instantly, and the exe to be run in its own process. This is not a good long term solution, but will give you a temporary solution to your immediate problem.
This is the default behavior of the Scheduled Task system, as it doesn't know that the job is complete until the application actually exits. Therefore, if your application is still open after 24 hours, the next run will simply be skipped because the current run is "still going" as far as the scheduler is concerned.
Personally I would re-visit the way that you handle your job process, as your are setting up a scenario that will be hard to manage long term.
I recommend writing to a log file instead of displaying a UI for any output and/or errors. This way, the application can write, then exit, and you can review the log at your convenience. This is a very common solution for automated processes.
In the process of deploying our .net app, I've got about 20 scheduled tasks set up on a server, all of which basically do the same thing: invoke a small .net console app that pulls data from a SQL db and posts it to a web service. Each task invokes a separate copy of the app, each copy having a different lookup ID value in its config file.
All but two of these tasks run reliably every night. Two of the tasks seem to sporadically stop running from time to time, and it's currently a mystery as to why. When they stop running, the scheduled task interface correctly shows their last run date, which is a day or more behind the other tasks, which have continued to run at the scheduled time. The tasks which stopped running do not run again on their own, despite being indicated as scheduled to run every night. There are no errors recorded in the event log or in the scheduled task interface itself. And here's the strangest part to us: If I manually kick off the scheduled task, it runs fine, it invokes the .net console app and everything finishes without anomaly. And then it continues to run fine at its scheduled time, for days or weeks at a time, only to eventually fail, seemingly out of the blue. It appears both tasks always start to fail on the same night.
There's a "Last Result" column that should give you a code related to the task itself running (it's not going to have any kind of exception data). 0 means the task completed without errors. Anything else you can look up and see why the task won't start. If the task still seems to not be running, but you still see a 0 for the Last Result, that means there's something broken in your code, but it's exiting gracefully.
Did you set "Start in" property?
If these .NET console apps need app.config or some files located into their path, you have to set "Start in" property to "c:\your\app\path\, otherwise they start as if they are in the system directory, and they cannot find files they need!
Taskscheduler assumes on 64 bits systems that the applicaiton is 64 bit.
If it is 32 bit launch it from the 32 bit command line, i.e. if you want to run c:\program files (x86)\Myprogram\Program.exe, tell taskscheduler to launch:
%systemroot%\Syswow64\cmd.exe /C "c:\program files (x86)\Myprogram\Program.exe"
This forces it to launch from the 32 bit command-prompt and hence with 32 bit emulation.
I found this super helpful link :https://windowsreport.com/windows-scheduled-tasks-not-running/ for thorough debugging steps for many use cases.
In my case user account with which scheduler was configured to run was locked that stopped execution of scheduled tasks without any logs or reporting problem.
One reason for Scheduled Tasks not running occurs when associating them with a password-less Windows user account: by default Scheduled Tasks are prevented from running with a blank password. If you want to run a Scheduled Task from an account with no password you have to disable a system variable:
Go to: Start > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options
Select: "Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only"
Disable this variable
Disclaimer: It´s not recommended to have accounts with no password.
The answer to the below SO question may also be highly relevant to people reading this question (but, NB, it describes only one possible specific problem with Scheduled Tasks and I believe neither of these questions is a duplicate of the other):
Why is my Scheduled Task updating its 'Last Run Time' correctly, and giving a 'Last Run Result' of '(0x0)', but still not actually working?
The summary of the answer given to that other question is that Windows 2012 Scheduled Tasks do not see the correct environment variables, including PATH, for the account which the task is set to run as.
In terms of more general Scheduled Task troubleshooting (as asked about in this question), you can test for this particular issue (e.g. running SET > test.txt in the task, as suggested in that answer), and once you can see it happening, you can work around it if it is affecting you.
In my case, the scheduled task wouldn't run even though it said last run was successful (0). It turned out to be that the windows user account that was running the jobs had become locked out. I only realized this because I tried editing the existing scheduled task, set the user account to the same one, then hit OK and it gave me an error about the account being locked out.
Maybe they hung and were still running?
You can click on the extras-menu and choose the menu entry to view the log, then notepad will open a log file from the task planner
I found this page helpful when I was trying to trouble-shoot a misbehaving Scheduled Task:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308558
Select View->Details to show the additional information, like Last Run Time, and Status, and this page gave me the meaning of the status/error code:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms681381(v=vs.85).aspx
I discovered a similar issue February 23 2023 but my logs reveal it started mid January 2023.
My tasks had been working for many months without issue. The I began seeing the same error: The system cannot find the file specified. After all day testing and searching I found that a Windows update on Jan 10 2023 changed the way white space is handled. Formerly only needed one set of quotes. The command line help explains:
C:\> schtasks /create /?
==> Spaces in file paths can be used by using two sets of quotes, one
set for CMD.EXE and one for SchTasks.exe. The outer quotes for CMD
need to be double quotes; the inner quotes can be single quotes or
escaped double quotes:
SCHTASKS /Create
/tr "'c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplorer.exe' \"c:\log data\today.xml\""