I had this problem. It was related to the fact the the windows logon account did not have a password and I could not provide a password on the task until a user account password is created. In order for the scheduled task to run a password is required, both on the schedule task itself, and on the user account that is running the task. I got the message every time I tried to get my McAfee virus scan schedule to run. It didn't run because of the missing passwords. When I tried to set the password on the task I got that error. I looked it up on McAfee and found the exact error message "data area passed to a system call is too small". The There are a bunch of knowledge base articles on running scheduled tasks in XP. The resolution according to the McAfee site was: 1) Call Microsoft and ask for the hotfix for article 812960. fyi I fixed the problem without the hotfix. 2) Try to schedule your task. If it works, create. If not, do the next step. 3) Create a password on the user account that is trying to run that task. This is a MUST. 4) Restart the computer and logon to that user account with the password you just created. 5) Open the task scheduler and delete all the tasks that do not work. 6) Restart again and logon. 7) Wait 30 minutes for the garbage collection routine to run which will cleanup the and remove the deleted tasks properly (something internal to XP I guess), but make sure that during this 30 minutes the machine does not go into stand-by or hibernation. 8) Recreate your scheduled tasks using the password. This worked for me without installing the hotfix described in step 1.
