In the past, I have talked about the Scheduled Tasks system in Windows and how you can use it to automate common tasks in Windows. If you like, you can also set up Task Scheduler to notify you whenever a task was missed or aborted before completion. This way, if the program tries to run a maintenance task like Disk Defragmenter and fails, you’ll know that your disk is not being serviced. To enable this notification, first go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks. Then go to Advanced, Notify Me Of Missed Tasks.

You should note that certain tasks occur rather frequently (such as the Windows Critical Update Notification). If you have one of these tasks enabled, you could find yourself annoyed by how frequently you are informed of a missed scheduled task. Experiment and see if the notification works for you.