Windows Vista How to 'Wake' computer using Task Scheduler?

I find that the longer I have had this computer, the more it tries to do when I bring it out of sleep each morning as it runs tasks in the background that it couldn't run when it was in sleep. The effect of this is to slow down the computer when it first comes out of sleep for periods up to half an hour

I have tried using the task scheduler to wake the computer from sleep earlier than when I want to use it so all this housecleaning would be complete when I arrive to use it but it does not seem to wake up even though I have set the condition to wake computer from sleep.

In this instance, I have set the task to open Word.

Is there a way to set the computer to wake from sleep each day so that all this stuff can be run before I get there?

 

Try checking the way your antimalware is set to scan. I run antimalware manually and I don't get any tasks running when I bring it out of sleep.

Do some online antimalware scans in case the cause might be malware that your antimalware provider does not recognise as malicious. I (manually) run Spybot, even though my antivirus now includes an antispyware scanner.

Some background tasks should be set to run when the screen saver comes on. Do you have it set for a reasonable amount of time running the screen saver before it goes into sleep mode?

Try closing any running programs and going into sleep mode. If there is little or no activity when it wakes, the reason is probably that you have too many programs open when it sleeps or that you need more RAM to handle them.

Matt

 

Are you using a UPC (Uninterruptible Power Supply) to power your computer? I ask because I've been doing some experimenting here trying to determine what could cause this. I have a UPC and it seems that the tasks don't want to run when I schedule them unless I uncheck the line on the conditions tab, under power, that says start the task only if the computer is on AC power. If I do that, the task wakes the computer and runs. If not, the computer will still wake but won't run the task. I get an error in Task Scheduler that says something about the task failing to run because of one or more conditions set, or some such thing.

Probably not your problem as you say the PC doesn't wake up and mine will do that, just not run the task. If you use a UPC though, it's something you can try anyway.

However, if you haven't tried watching it to see what happens, you might want to do that. Create a temp task, any task. Schedule it to run in a few minutes, and then put the computer to sleep. Then wait to see if the computer wakes up. If it does, watch it for a couple more minutes without touching anything and see if it goes back to sleep. By default Windows will put the computer back to sleep 2 minutes after waking it for the task if there is no interaction with the mouse or keyboard in that amount of time. If the task runs or even if it doesn't, the computer will go back to sleep. If it does sleep again and 2 minutes isn't enough time for the tasks you have scheduled, to complete, the computer will still go to sleep and the tasks never complete. If this is what's happening, there is a registry edit you can do to change the length of time the computer will remain awake without any input from you.

http://annoyances-resolved.blogspot.com/2009/10/computer-goes-back-to-sleep-after-wake.html

If it sounds like this is what could be happening, you might want to look into this. Other than that, I'm out of ideas. At least for now.

 

I didn't realise that the computer went back to sleep so it probably was waking up and sleeping again after 120 seconds. I have modified the registry and that shoul;d do it.

Thanks for your help.

 

OK, hope that does the trick for you.

Seems to me that this is something where MS wasn't using their heads when they made it that way. There's all kinds of things that one could schedule that could take a long time to do. That's the reason I schedule some things to run at night. So I don't have to deal with the extra overhead while I'm using the computer. Seems to me there should be a setting in task scheduler to over ride the default on this. Apparently they haven't given it much thought since Vista either. Win 7 is the same way.