Advanced Scheduling Options In Windows XP


Visiting the properties dialog box for a task gives you the opportunity to modify the task’s schedule, change the password or user name associated with the task, add command-line arguments for the task, or even change the application that is scheduled to run. The properties dialog box also provides some useful advanced scheduling options.

The Show Multiple Schedules check box, on the Schedule tab, lets you assign more than one schedule to the same task. You could, for example, arrange to have your task run every Friday at 5 P.M. and also at 5 P.M. on the 30th day of every month. When you select this check box, a New button appears. Click New to enter a second or subsequent schedule.

Figure 1 shows the dialog box that is displayed when you click Advanced on the Schedule tab. Here you can specify an end date for a recurrent task or specify a repeat interval for a recurrent task. If you select Repeat Task, you can use the Time or Duration option to tell the system when to quit repeating. To repeat every two hours until 11 P.M., for example, you could select Repeat Task, set the Every fields to 2 and Hours, select Time, and specify 11 P.M. To run at 30-minute intervals for four hours, you could set the Every fields to 30 and Minutes, select Duration, and then specify 4 hours and 0 minutes.


Figure 1. Click Advanced on the Schedule tab to produce the Advanced Schedule Options dialog box, where you can set end dates and recurrence parameters.

On the Settings tab, shown in Figure 2, you can provide a termination order for a task that has run too long, stipulate that a task not run if the computer is in use at the scheduled time (or stop running if someone begins using the computer), and tell the system not to run a task if the computer is running on battery power. On ACPI-compliant computers, the Power Management section of this dialog box includes a Wake The Computer To Run This Task check box. Selecting this check box ensures that your task will run at the scheduled time, even if the computer is in standby at the time.

On the Settings tab, you can also select a check box that will remove the task object from the Scheduled Tasks folder if, on the current schedule, it’s never going to run again.


Figure 2. The Settings tab of a task’s properties dialog box provides power-management control and other useful options.