Scheduled task(s) won't run if time/date trigger passes whilst PC off or in sleep

[vistapete]

Hi, hopefully some one can help me with this as frankly it's driving me mental!

I am creating simple on a schedule (one time only) tasks which run fine if the time trigger is reached whilst the computer is on and I'm logged in, but fail to run if the computer is shutdown or asleep when the trigger time is reached, even with "Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed" checked.

I am aware that missed scheduled tasks aren't ran immediately on start-up (10 min delay?) but they never run.

There are no events regarding the tasks in event log and the last run status is "Never" so they just don't seem to be picked up as missed tasks.

I have unchecked all the idle/power options so the task should run whatever. I have tried checking the "Run with highest privileges" box and checking "Run when user is logged on" or "Run whether user is logged on or not"

The tasks will run manually fine if I select run from "actions"

At the moment I'm just trying to get a one-time scheduled task to display a message so I'm not trying anything fancy.

Setting the task to run at logon or startup works fine. The system time/date is set Ok.

A Google search revealed one guy with a similar problem but no solution

This is Vista HP sp2 with all important updates applied - running on an acer aspire laptop. A friends Samsung with the same Vista setup also shows this behaviour.

 

[richc46]

Welcome Vistapete.

From MS, perhaps this may help. Good luck

The Task Scheduler does not wake the computer to run a scheduled task in Windows Vista

 

[vistapete]

Hi RichC,

unfortunately this doesn't help as the link addresses the fact that "Create a basic task" doesn't give the option of waking the PC from sleep to perform the task.

I don't want to wake the PC from a sleep state per-se just perform a task whose trigger was missed because the pc was shutdown (almost exclusively) or in a sleep state at the time and have the task run when the PC is up and running again.

The problem is that according to all the tutorials I've set the tasks up to do this but they don't.

 

[richc46]

Your program may be corrupted, hard to tell.

Try this, it cannot hurt.

Type cmd in search (do not hit enter) right click and run as administrator

Type sfc /scannow in the cmd prompt. If there are errors run it 3 times.

 

[vistapete]

Hi again,

the scan found corrupt files that it couldn't repair, I repeated the scan twice more as advised but the message was the same.

Once I figured out how to find the problem files in the (14Mb!) log it was only something to do with sidebar which I don't use anyway.

Oddly the first reboot after the scan threw up a problem with comodo firewall which couldn't run (never had that before) - another reboot sorted that and it's been fine since.

I'm pretty much resigned to it not working - tad annonying but that's the Microsoft experience for you I suppose

Anyway thanks for your efforts all the same.

Cheers

 

[richc46]

Sorry that the problem is so difficult to correct.

 

[Vic5]

I have the same problem, even though on Windows 7 (incidentally, I also have Acer Aspire, which is how I found this post).
I did tons of experiments and research (spent >1 day...), in all possible combinations of settings in Properties of tasks, and having enabled "allow wake timers" in power settings (and scan sfc ...) to establish that:
To have a task wake the computer from sleep, AND execute, the computer should have entered sleep mode at least 1 min before task's trigger time.
Else, if (say in tests) you put computer to sleep just 45s or less before trigger, then that task does wake the computer (within secs..<1min of the trigger) but just doesn't manage launch/get activated. "run the task asap" setting doesn't help (nor "restart if failed to run", as that only applies for tasks that managed to be activated).
From looking at Event Viewer logs (windows/system, and applications/microsoft/windows/TaskScheduler), I concluded, in order for task to launch, the trigger needs to fire when computer is already awake. For that, computer wakes shortly before the actual trigger time (within 30 secs, in my trials). Thus, you need to have entered sleep sufficiently in advance of the trigger time.

But even more worrisome is that "Run task a.s.a.p. after a scheduled start is missed" doesn't do anything, when scheduled task is missed either b/c of too short sleep as above, or because of shutdown (again experimented a lot). Waiting way more than 10 min after start up still didn't run that missed task.

Anyone else did or could do such experiments on their computers to confirm this?