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Naming Your Schedule Task

Updated: 11 Aug 2008 | 2 comments
haim96's picture
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I'm using NS to run schedule tasks with VB scripts on my network computers. Recently I posted a question on the forum about NS tasks not running and just skipping to the next time they should be running.

I couldn't find anything in the NS log nor in the windows event logs, the tasks just skip without warnings or errors.

After some trail and error I found that the name of the task was the cause to that behavior!

The name was something like this:

Task name run at 12:00

I notice that when I'm using colon character (:) for the time description the task is not running! - even if I right click on the task name and select "Start now" the task didn't run.

I tried other characters like comma, single dot and underline and it runs just fine. So it's seems that the problem is with the colon (:) and maybe other character that I didn't test.

So my tip is this: Keep your tasks name simple! Don't use any special characters and if you can, try to run the task manually to make sure it will run when you really need it!

Comments

kbuller's picture
12
Aug
2008
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I had this same problem once

The reason is that the NS uses your schedule name to name the task it creates in c:\windows\tasks. Since a colon is an illegal character for windows file names, the NS can not create the task.

haim96's picture
12
Aug
2008
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where have you been a week ago ?!

[quote=kbuller]The reason is that the NS uses your schedule name to name the task it creates in c:\windows\tasks. Since a colon is an illegal character for windows file names, the NS can not create the task.[/quote]

all the time i thought that the tasks are runnig
with the altiris service and they all written in the database... now it's all make sense!

any way, i thinks it's realy importent to know this
because it's easy to make this mistake.