Vista Task Scheduler ignores duration

D

D.P. Roberts

Apparently the folks at MS did not adequately test the new Task Scheduler in
Windows Vista. Case in point:

I need a task to run every hour during the day (7am to 7pm) on weekdays
only. That's it, it's really that simple, and it has worked fine for years
on previous versions of Windows using Scheduled Tasks. But it fails
miserably in Vista. In Vista, the task runs every hour, 24 hours a day,
every day (including weekends). Vista's Task Scheduler completely ignores
the 12 hour duration - in fact, it ignores every duration value I've tried.
Here's how my task is configured on the "Edit Trigger" page:

*Begin the Task: On a schedule
*Weekly
*Start: 4/10/2008 at 7:00 AM (synch time zones is not checked)
*Recur every 1 week on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
(Saturday and Sunday are unchecked)
*Repeat task every 1 hour for a duration of 12 hours
*Enabled

When looking at the Task summary after setting it up, the following
description is shown under Triggers:
"At 7:00 AM every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of every
week, starting 4/10/2008 - After triggered, repeat every 1 hour for a
duration of 12 hours."

I was hoping SP1 for Vista would've fixed this bug, but it didn't make any
difference. Honestly, I'm trying to like Vista, I really am. But stupid bugs
like this are making it very difficult to do that! If anyone has any ideas
or knows of a workaround, I'm all ears!!

By the way, the task executes a simple ping sweep script that takes about 5
minutes to run.


Thanks for any help out there...
 
C

Carey Frisch [MVP]

A task does not run as expected after you wake a Windows Vista-based computer
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930133/en-us

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows System & Performance

---------------------------------------------------------------

:

Apparently the folks at MS did not adequately test the new Task Scheduler in
Windows Vista. Case in point:

I need a task to run every hour during the day (7am to 7pm) on weekdays
only. That's it, it's really that simple, and it has worked fine for years
on previous versions of Windows using Scheduled Tasks. But it fails
miserably in Vista. In Vista, the task runs every hour, 24 hours a day,
every day (including weekends). Vista's Task Scheduler completely ignores
the 12 hour duration - in fact, it ignores every duration value I've tried.
Here's how my task is configured on the "Edit Trigger" page:

*Begin the Task: On a schedule
*Weekly
*Start: 4/10/2008 at 7:00 AM (synch time zones is not checked)
*Recur every 1 week on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
(Saturday and Sunday are unchecked)
*Repeat task every 1 hour for a duration of 12 hours
*Enabled

When looking at the Task summary after setting it up, the following
description is shown under Triggers:
"At 7:00 AM every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of every
week, starting 4/10/2008 - After triggered, repeat every 1 hour for a
duration of 12 hours."

I was hoping SP1 for Vista would've fixed this bug, but it didn't make any
difference. Honestly, I'm trying to like Vista, I really am. But stupid bugs
like this are making it very difficult to do that! If anyone has any ideas
or knows of a workaround, I'm all ears!!

By the way, the task executes a simple ping sweep script that takes about 5
minutes to run.


Thanks for any help out there...
 
J

Jon

It's not difficult to devise a workaround for this, but yeah I feel your
pain - there are a number of bugs that need fixing in Task Scheduler - the
one Carey mentioned is another.

To work round the issue, you could either build the timing into the task
itself to test whether or not it should be running or not, or add a couple
of additional tasks to either enable or disable your main task. For that
option check out the /enable /disable options with

SCHTASKS /Change /?
 
Joined
Dec 6, 2008
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Not a bug

Its not bug - just a change in feature.
Scheduler wont care at what time the task was "supposed" to start, but whenever the task does start, it'll repeat it every xx minutes for a duration of xx hrs from THAT instant - when the task did start - irrespective of its *actual* start time.

Try setting repeat every 1 minute for a duration of 5 minutes. And set the starting time couple of hours earlier than current time and manually start the task - it'll repeat itself every next minutes four more times - just as expected.

I had same trouble, then I saw this :
 

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