Task Scheduler error

[kmillerusaf]

Happy Thanksgiving to All who celebrate

Here's my problem:

I am leaving in 2 days and am using my girlfriend's computer. I am novice at best when it comes to computers and she's two times worse. What I was trying to do to help keep her computer clean and secure was run a/v, antispyware, and defrag software through the task scheduler on XP. However when I try to schedule a task, at the very end, it prompts for a password for the user account that we are logged in as (which is the administrator). Now she never set a password for the account so I leave both password fields blank and press okay. I then get the error labeled "0x80070005 Error: Access is denied" and none of the tasks work even if I right click them and click run. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I will be leaving very soon and want to make sure she is somewhat protected while I am gone.

OS: Windows XP Home Edition SP2

Keith

[Statica]

Firstly, Think you're in need of a hotfix available from Microsoft that may resolve the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904423 .. it should be emailed to you free of charge.

A couple of things -
You should be setting an administrative password instead of leaving it blank. If you are trying to secure her computer then that is the first thing you should be doing instead of running as admin without a password. On the plus side, you may be able to get task scheduler working once you use a passworded account as well.
You could also minimize a lot of risk by NOT running as admin on a regular basis but by using the computer with only User or Power User rights.
Finally, most a/v and antispyware software have their own schedulers that you could use to set up a schedule.

[kmillerusaf]

Thanks for the quick response Statica. You are right, we should have a password on the admin account and I will create one here shortly. I did e-mail Microsoft about the problem as well so hopefully they will e-mail the hotfix as well. I will post a reply to let you know whether or not it works with just creating a password on the admin account. Also, I have yet to find a scheduler on either avast! a/v or lavasoft ad-aware... I may be looking in the wrong place for it but I have searched for them to no avail. Thanks again and hopefully I can get this issue resolved.

Keith

**UPDATE** Setting a password for the administrator account seems to have fixed it because I can now run the task by right clicking and selecting "run". Hopefully the scheduled task will work but I will check tomorrow morning to see if the programs ran overnight. THANKS!

[kmillerusaf]

One other question if you don't mind... I know when I did the defrag task, the instructions told me to add " C:" at the end of the run command line. For the antivirus and antispyware software, do I need to add anything special at the end of the command lines for it to scan the c: automatically as well or would it be the same as the instructions for the defrag task?

[Statica]

For Avast free edition, there is no auto-scheduling but you can do it using the task scheduler. Am assuming you've given this a read: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?boa...hreadid=3796.0

For Adaware the commandline parameters are here: http://www.lavasoftsupport.com/index.php?showtopic=206

HTH and have a happy thanksgiving.

[kmillerusaf]

Thanks. Yeah I read that forum article on avast.com before you actually posted your response and had that working but it seems that you can't do the same with ad-aware's free "personal" version (only with plus versions and higher). Looks like I will have to find another anti spyware program that may actually allow you to schedule scans. Thanks

Keith

[flanzig1]

Ewido looks to have a scan sceduler built in. http://www.ewido.net/en/download/

[kmillerusaf]

Thanks flanzig, I just wish some of the free ones like Ad-aware personal would have the options to do the scheduled scan. Makes life a lot easier especially for the newbies of the world like my girlfriend and I.

Keith

[Statica]

Spybot S&D has command line parameters for autochecks and fixes. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/30.html

[kmillerusaf]

Well I just got my laptop which has Windows XP Home on it but when I try to enter "defrag" into the task scheduler it says it cant find the program. I don't know how else to add the defrag into the menu... Is there a problem with laptops and task scheduler because the computer I was using before was XP home and worked fine. Thanks for any help!

Keith