How To Create Scheduled Task In Windows Xp

The Scheduled Tasks window lets yous set upwardly Windows XP to open sure programs, utilities, and documents co-ordinate to a schedule that you specify. Unfortunately, all it can do is open up programs and documents on cue. Unless you lot're prepared to type in the special codes, chosen switches, the Scheduled Tasks window can't really make them do annihilation once they're open. The tutorial on Section 16.six.four offers more information near switches.

To open the Chore Scheduler (come across Effigy 16-10), choose Kickoff All Programs Accessories System Tools Scheduled Tasks. The Scheduled Tasks window opens, at first containing only a single icon (unless a program you've installed has already scheduled a task), chosen Add Scheduled Chore.

Figure 16-x. Top: The Job Scheduler keeps a calendar for Windows XP. Tasks announced in the schedule when you enter them manually, or when other programs (such as the Maintenance Magician) gear up them up. You can apply the Task Scheduler window to add, modify, or remove tasks. (Make sure your estimator is turned on during the time whatsoever job is supposed to run.) Bottom: The magician asks you what you want to open up, and how often.

xvi.6.1 Calculation a Task to the Scheduler

To add a task to the schedule, double-click the Add Scheduled Task icon. A sorcerer appears; click Next . A listing of programs now appears on your PC (Figure 16-ten, bottom left). If the ane yous want to schedule is listed, click it. If not, click Scan, find and open up its folder, and double-click its icon.

Now y'all're asked how oftentimes you want the new task to run: every twenty-four hour period, every week, and so on. Brand a pick, and so follow the wizard'south prompts to schedule your task. For example, if you chose Monthly, you tin tell the wizard which day of the month, and at which time (Effigy 16-x, bottom right).

Finally, considering Windows XP tin can adjust multiple user accounts (see the adjacent chapter), and can even run your tasks while somebody else is logged in and using the reckoner, you'll accept to enter your user name and countersign.

Completing the wizard means you lot've successfully added a new icon to the Scheduled Tasks window (Start Control Console Scheduled Tasks). If the window is in Details view, tidy lilliputian columns tell you what each task'south schedule is and when it will run next.

16.6.2 Changing Scheduled Tasks

Double-clicking a task's list in the Task Scheduler window opens its Properties dialog box (Figure 16-xi), where y'all can make several kinds of changes:

Cancel a scheduled task . You can, of course, stop a sure scheduled task from running only by deleting the job entirely "throwing away its icon from the Scheduled Tasks window. In many cases, however, you might detect it more flexible to merely turn off its Enabled checkbox (on the Job tab of the Properties dialog box). The latter method leaves the task in the Task Scheduler window, so that you tin turn it back on at a later date.
Change the schedule for a task . Click the Schedule tab of the Properties dialog box to alter the schedule for a task.
Modify the settings for a scheduled chore . Using the Settings tab of a task's Properties dialog box, you can blueprint sure automated tasks to run, or not, co-ordinate to certain conditions (see Figure 16-eleven). For example, you might desire to plough on "Only start the chore if the estimator has been idle for at to the lowest degree __ minutes," so that your processor- intensive task doesn't burn itself up when somebody else (using some other account) is rendering 3-D movie scenes.

Figure 16-eleven. Some of the mill settings for scheduled tasks are a flake ridiculous. For example, it'due south probably a skilful idea to cease a task if it runs longer than 4 or five hours, not 72 hours. In fact, except for defragging the hard drive, virtually scheduled tasks should accept less than an hour . The bottom section of the dialog box applies to laptop computers.

xvi.6.3 Start a Job Immediately

To trigger 1 of the listed programs right now, correct-click its listing in the Scheduled Tasks window and choose Run from the shortcut bill of fare. (The chore will run again at its next scheduled time.)

16.6.iv Interruption All Scheduled Tasks

If a schedule-triggering outcome is taking identify on your PC while you lot're trying to work, thus slowing downwards the proceedings , you can suspend those background operations until your work is consummate. Simply open the Scheduled Tasks window and choose Avant-garde Intermission Job Scheduler.

When you call up it'due south OK for those background-scheduled tasks to carry on, "unpause" the scheduler past choosing Avant-garde Keep Task Scheduler.

16.half-dozen.5 Stop Using Task Scheduler

If you don't want any tasks to run, always, open the Scheduled Tasks window and choose Advanced Terminate Using Chore Scheduler. Doing and then prevents the scheduler from starting upwardly when you turn on the computer. (Choose Avant-garde Offset Using Task Scheduler to plough information technology back on.)

NOTE

You tin request that Windows XP notify you lot, the adjacent fourth dimension you log on, when a task didn't run at its appointed time (considering the PC was turned off, for instance). To set this up, open up the Scheduled Tasks window and then choose Advanced Notify Me of Missed Tasks.

16.6.6 A Disk Defragmenter Example

Before the invention of the mouse, menus , and icons, figurer geeks operated their machines solely at the command line " a black window where you had to type cryptic commands to go annihilation done.

Windows XP still has a command line (Outset All Programs Accessories Control Prompt). About everyday Windows fans don't even know information technology'south at that place "but it comes in handy every now then. You demand the command line, in fact, to use the Task Scheduler.

To make matters even less user-friendly, call back that Windows doesn't call programs by the same names you do. (Microsoft Give-and-take, for example, is really a program called winword.exe. ) To run a programme from the command line, you have to telephone call it by the same name Windows uses. You lot can notice what that is by right-clicking the plan's icon in the Kickoff menu, choosing Properties from the shortcut menu, and looking at the Target field in the Properties dialog box.

That's simply i ingredient you'll demand to run a plan from the control line "the others are control parameters called switches . These are normally dashes or slashes followed past letter and number combinations, like the second office of the command ping "t , and they tell the programme what to exercise once you've opened it. Task Scheduler runs programs past executing command line strings like this.

Putting together the right switches to trigger the activity you want is non for the technically timid. But if you'd like to know what you're getting into, here'southward an example that demonstrates how to schedule Disk Defragmenter to run at a specific time (when you're sleeping, for instance, and won't care that it's slowing down your PC). In fact, this is one of the nigh common uses of the Task Scheduler: using information technology to trigger common maintenance tasks without your involvement.

16.half dozen.six.1 Programming Disk Defragmenter

To schedule a program like Disk Defragmenter, you must showtime learn what switches information technology understands.

To discover which switches are bachelor in a Windows XP plan, open a Control Prompt window (Start All Programs Accessories Command Prompt). Then blazon the name of the plan, followed past either the - h or -? switch. (Both of these mean "help.") For example, you tin can find out which switches drive Disk Defragmenter past typing this:

                Defrag -?

When you press Enter, a assistance screen similar this appears:

                Usage: Defrag <volume> [-a] [-f] [-v] [-?] volume  Drive letter of the alphabet or mount point d:\ or d:\vol\mountpoint -a Clarify simply -f Force defragmentation fifty-fifty if costless infinite is low -v Verbose output -? Display this help text

From this, you might discern that the control necessary to run the Deejay Defragmenter on your difficult bulldoze (C:) is this:

                Defrag C:\ -f

which means, "Use the defrag command on my C: bulldoze; defragment it fifty-fifty if I don't have much gratuitous space."

Always exam your command line before you schedule it to run unattended. If the command behaves itself while you lot're watching, you can be confident that it will do the same when Job Scheduler runs unattended.

To schedule the control, open the Scheduled Tasks programme in the Command Panel. Double-click the Add together Scheduled Task icon. The Scheduled Job Wizard appears; click Next to see the list of programs that the Task Scheduler offers to trigger.

However, Disk Defragmenter isn't listed, and then yous must click Browse and navigate to the Local Disk (C:) Windows System32 folder, where yous'll find it (the program's real name is defrag.exe). Double-click it, and then proceed with the sorcerer screens that let y'all specify a schedule and tape your account password. You lot can schedule the program to run once or at regular intervals, and even create multiple schedules for the same job. (If your user account doesn't have a password assigned, you'll have to create ane, following the instructions on Department 17.3.4.)

On the final sorcerer screen, don't click Finish until you've first turned on "Open advanced properties for this chore when I click Finish." Afterward you click Cease, a special summary window appears, listing the program to be run: C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/defrag.exe. Click in the Run box at the end of the control, press the Space bar, and then type C:\ (or whatever the drive letter is), another space, and and so - f , every bit shown in Figure 16-12. Click OK.

Figure 16-12. Disk Defragmenter is fix to coil. You've just told Disk Defragmenter to defrag the E: drive, and "thanks to the "-f" switch "to run whether it thinks you need it or non.

Finally, you're asked to type in your countersign "twice. When yous click OK, your piece of work is done. An icon for your scheduled task appears on the screen for the Deejay Defragmenter schedule that you've only added, and it's prepared to run automatically at the times yous specified.

16.6.7 Interpreting Results

If you switch the Scheduled Tasks window into Details view past choosing View Details, the Last Result column is supposed to tell you whether or not the tasks you scheduled were completed. Unfortunately, Chore Scheduler doesn't translate the numerical result codes into English, and so what yous see in this column is typically a cryptic hexadecimal value like 0x0 .

All yous have to know nigh such get out codes is that, in nigh cases, a value of 0 (or 0x0) means that the program ran without a hitch. Anything else represents some kind of error message. If that's what yous get, you lot, or somebody who knows about this kind of matter, should attempt running the command in the Command Prompt window in hopes of discovering why it's non working correctly.

Source: https://flylib.com/books/en/4.306.1.148/1/

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