www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Hi all,

I have a quick question about the task scheduler within Windows environment.

Mostly my PC at 1am is switched off!! However, I have a task scheduled every 2 weeks in the early hours of a Wednesday morning which was standard when the PC was set up (Don't ask me why a Wednesday but it is!!! ) to do a disk defrag.

1. Does the task scheduler switch the PC on automatically and do the job then switch it off?
2. When I look at the performed tasks, PC says when the last disk defrag was but how do I know that it actually did it?

Is it a case of, if it misses its slot, does the task get done the next time the PC is switched on??

Whilst I understand a limited amount of PC architecture and jobs this one has baffled me a bit.

A bit confused
GC

No, the PC doesn't switch itself on. The timing is based on the PC being on 24/7 and if you want the defrag to run under the scheduler, you will have to change the timing to suit a period when the PC is ON and unused.

Hi Dave,

Ok thanks for confirming what has been a burning question been meaning to ask for ages. Had a feeling that was the case.

Just done a manual defrag this evening and it took 2hr 45mins roughly on a 1TB drive of which 692GB still free!!!!

Nice to know that an answer is never that far away on this site

Cheers
GC

possible solution....if your BIOS supports it, have a look in there and you can get it to "wake up" at certain times if its off so you could set it to come on ten mins before your task is set to run then you could configure your task to shut down the pc when it completes :)

Have you considered a defrag and shutdown batch file ? You would have to run it every now and again but you can then go to bed and it will power down after its finished.

That is one thing I did like from the Mac world, being able to set the machine to turn on and off at certain times, set my Father In Laws up to turn on 10 minutes before he normally used it so it was ready to log in when he wanted to work and to turn itself off at say 10pm.