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by fetbaffe 2220 days ago
How is Windows Task Scheduler broken?
2 comments
josteink 2220 days ago
> How is Windows Task Scheduler broken?

Fundamentally.

Try to schedule a simple script to run once an hour, while the user is logged in. No other conditions. Nothing complex.

Wait an hour and wait to see one window pop open running your script.

Wait one work-day. Work on your machine. Observe 10+ executions of that script, in parallel, on the mark the script was scheduled to run once.

Watch this get worse every day, until reboot. And then it slowly starts collapsing on itself again.

Not even this simple use-case works. It’s just unbelievably broken.

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jpalomaki 2219 days ago
Did you check "run task as soon as possible after scheduled start is missed"? And what about "If task is already running, then the following rule applies: Do not start a new instance".
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josteink 2219 days ago
Not sure. Why should those be needed?

It says run once and it literally launches 10+ within the same 100ms.

That’s just broken.

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amw 2220 days ago
Can't bulk-kill processes, for one. Not searchable, for two.
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Someone1234 2220 days ago
You can bulk kill with e.g.

     Get-ScheduledTask -TaskPath "\UpdateTasks\" | Stop-ScheduledTask
That also demonstrates search too, by the way.
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fetbaffe 2220 days ago
Haven't used it in a long time, but looking at it now, the GUI is definitely clunky and those features are missing.

Wasn't there another GUI during the Windows XP days?

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WorldMaker 2220 days ago
That MMC snap-in hasn't changed much in the NT era of Windows. You might be recalling 95-ME's even worse task scheduler?
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