Alternative to Windows Task Scheduler?

I’m having a hell of a time getting Windows Task Scheduler (Win7) to run a batch file or to run a SyncToy job for me. They each return different errors, and I’m done trying to make it work.

Are there alternatives that aren’t so damned picky about which account runs a job, etc.? I’m just trying to do nightly backups of some files to a network drive.

From the way you’re descibing it, it sounds like your issue is with the permissioning of the drives/ actions you’re trying to do and not the scheduler itself, so switching won’t help you there.

Why don’t you try creating a new acct w/ admin rights on both areas and setting the job to run under that acct?

Yeah…I think what’s being “picky” is the security model in Windows 7 that prevents random accounts from running random executables :-P

I’m sure you guys are right. The problem started after I upgraded my hard drive and copied everything from my old drive to the new one. I probably have ownership issues or something keeping me from copying stuff over to the network drive. I have all the admin rights I need (I think), so it must be an ownership issue.

If I remember correctly, services and the applications launched from them don’t have the same network drive mappings as you do as a logged-on user, unless you go through some contortions.

The easiest way to get around it might be to remap the network shares in the batch file you launch, via “net use …”

I don’t think that’s the problem, because the batch file will run if I start it manually. Also, I have the same setup on the other computers in the office - mine is the only one having the problem, and it started after I swapped out the drive.

EDIT: Okay, I got it working. I set it to run under the Administrators group instead of under an individual account, and it appears to be good to go.

Windows Task Scheduler is a pretty crappy utility. It’s hard to use and really slow for some reason.

Totally agree.