Solved Can't get a daily Shutdown working in Task Scheduler...


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Marshall Brooks

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Similar issue to Can't get a daily Shutdown working in Task Scheduler... - Except ...

This used to work.

I want the computer to shut down at 8:30 P.M. on Monday and Thursday only.

From the other thread:
- S0 is not supported by firmware.
- The computer intentionally never enters sleep modes. (the only allowed one is sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity on battery).
- I originally had the task set to shutdown running "shutdown.exe /s /t /0 /f" I changed it to use an AutoHotKey command.
- Other scheduled tasks work fine.
- Shutdown scheduled task works fine if I click Run on it from the Task Scheduler.
- Shutdown scheduled task previously worked fine from Task Scheduler.
- Shutdown scheduled task does not work on a timer from Task Scheduler - i.e. I set the task to shut down the computer 5 minutes from now, walk away from the computer and 10 minutes later it is still running.

I would be open to other (free) software, but I don't have full admin rights on the machine, and I want something that could run from the command line. I downloaded Wise Auto Shutdown, and I can run it, but it looks like I need to open the program and select start task so it would run. I don't want to have to do that two days each week. It may be possible to run it via command line options, but I didn't see that in the documentation.
 
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Tested on a VM, worked fine without running the task manually.
How do you have the task configured?

Also command should be 'shutdown' for program name and args /s /f /t 0 (not /0)
 

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I only want it to run at 8:30, but I added extra times to check if it worked, it doesn't.
Above might be an issue, I had it previously set for 5-minutes of idle (when it used to work) and I reduced it to 1 minute when it stopped working, but it didn't help.
I probably did have "0" and not "/0" when it was using the shutdown.exe trigger. As I said, both tasks work fine when I click Run from Task Scheduler.
 

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I don't seem to be able to upload images ... Will try something else ...
 

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More info:
dennisbabkin.com

ShutdownWithUpdates - www.dennisbabkin.com

Download ShutdownWithUpdates - Install Pre-Downloaded Updates & Shutdown System
dennisbabkin.com

I tried ShutdownWithUpdates - same results. It works fine from the command line or when run manually from Task Scheduler, but does not run at the scheduled time.

The thing that I'm confused on is why Task Scheduler works for some tasks - Running Access database reports, etc., but fails for shutdown tasks, even running an AutoHotKey Script. How would it know what the script does to avoid it running ...
 

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1748976074362.webp
 

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Are you by chance trying to run it "whether user is logged in or not"?
 

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Works fine for me. Are you making sure to run with highest privileges?

Image1.webp
 

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OP stated he doesn't have admin rights.

If the answer is you're trying to run 'whether user is logged on or not' then your user needs to have the 'log on as batch job' user right assignment
 

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Solved - sortof ...

I compared my screenshots to @neemobeer's screenshots. Under Conditions, I had "Start the task only if the computer is idle for 1 minute." I unchecked that and it worked perfectly.

(I'm not crazy about that, b/c if one of my other tasks is running and takes longer than planned, the Task Scheduler will shut it down in the middle of it.").

Apparently, SOMETHING is always running in the background to make Windows think the computer is always busy.

To answer some of the other questions:

Run whether user is logged in or not has never worked for us. I wish it would, but when I tried it, it didn't seem to work.

Oddly, Run with highest privileges didn't seem to work either. I tried with some of the other tasks and they did not work with that selected and did work with that unselected - seems odd, but ... (Then again, when I tried that, I only had user rights. Currently, I have elevated rights, but I do not have admin rights.)
 

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neemobeer said:
OP stated he doesn't have admin rights.
Click to expand...
Doesn't matter - another user account with admin rights can be used, that is, unless they have no access to such an account at all.

It's also possible that this may not be necessary. It's how I set it up and it worked perfectly for me.
 

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Another thought - You might also try the sysinternals PSSHUTDOWN utility. I use it to reboot or shutdown all my systems from remote PCs over the network but it works equally well locally.

PsShutdown
 

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    Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 2
    CPU
    Intel i7-1255U
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    16 GB
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    Intel Iris Xe Graphics
    Sound Card
    Realtek® ALC3306-CG codec
    Monitor(s) Displays
    13.3-inch IPS Display
    Screen Resolution
    WQXGA (2560 x 1600)
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I'm marking this as solved, since the original question was solved. I still would like to know what Task Scheduler uses to determine if the system is idle and how I can change this - i.e. apparently now it thinks it is never idle. I would like to have it shut down only if it isn't actively processing a task. Then again, none of the other options I tested had a way to disable shutdown if the computer was not idle, unless AutoHotKey has a way of determining that.
 

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The issue doesn't appear to be with shutting down the computer - AutoHotKey, Shutdown.exe, ShutdownWithUpdates.exe all appear to do that when run manually or manually from Task Scheduler. The issue appears to be that Task Scheduler thinks the computer is not idle, even if I set it to only need the system to be idle for 1 minute and wait 2 hours for the idle state to kick in.

Maybe I have the opposite issue from the thread that I originally linked to - i.e. his computer wouldn't shut down if it was asleep/idle. Mine is never set to go to sleep/idle, so perhaps windows thinks it is always active.

I checked the power plan settings, and I don't appear to be able to set the computer to go to sleep when plugged in. It is set to "Never" and grayed out and it says "Some settings are managed by your system administrator."
 

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Marshall Brooks said:
The issue doesn't appear to be with shutting down the computer - AutoHotKey, Shutdown.exe, ShutdownWithUpdates.exe all appear to do that when run manually or manually from Task Scheduler. The issue appears to be that Task Scheduler thinks the computer is not idle, even if I set it to only need the system to be idle for 1 minute and wait 2 hours for the idle state to kick in.

Maybe I have the opposite issue from the thread that I originally linked to - i.e. his computer wouldn't shut down if it was asleep/idle. Mine is never set to go to sleep/idle, so perhaps windows thinks it is always active.

I checked the power plan settings, and I don't appear to be able to set the computer to go to sleep when plugged in. It is set to "Never" and grayed out and it says "Some settings are managed by your system administrator."
Click to expand...

That would be a Group Policy. You may have something set in there that is influencing your shutdown.

Just spitballin' here: It's also possible that MS accomplishes "never sleep" through some sort of periodic ping that makes the "sleep check" module think the user is still active. That would be in lieu of the sleep-check module just (properly) checking the switch that says "don't sleep, ever". The result being the Task Manager is seeing that ping as activity whereas the interactive request is just going with your command and gittin' 'er done.

I've seen worse code kludges that were there because they were layered on other kludges that were making things work without rewriting a whole subsystem. Not that I ever coded anything like that back in the day. Nope.
 

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Marshall Brooks said:
I still would like to know what Task Scheduler uses to determine if the system is idle and how I can change this - i.e. apparently now it thinks it is never idle.
Click to expand...
Probably still works like this, or similar…

“In Windows 7, the Task Scheduler verifies that the computer is in an idle state every 15 minutes. Task Scheduler checks for an idle state using two criteria: user absence, and a lack of resource consumption. The user is considered absent if there is no keyboard or mouse input during this period of time. The computer is considered idle if all the processors and all the disks were idle for more than 90% of the last detection interval. (An exception would be for any presentation type application that sets the ES_DISPLAY_REQUIRED flag. This flag forces Task Schedule to not consider the system as being idle, regardless of user activity or resource consumption.)”

Edit, for additional info

learn.microsoft.com

Task idle conditions - Win32 apps

A task can be handled in several ways when the computer enters an idle state. This includes defining an idle trigger or setting the idle conditions for when the task starts.
learn.microsoft.com

learn.microsoft.com

What's New in Task Scheduler - Win32 apps

List of new functionality introduced by different versions of Task Scheduler.
learn.microsoft.com
 

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@pseymour - Thank you that helps. A couple of things leap out at me:

  • First, it only checks every 15 minutes and considers it idle if nothing happened for 90% of the last 15 minutes. So my testing where I set the task to shutdown in 3 minutes from now, could NEVER work. (Although it also didn't work at the regular time with the 2 hour wait for idle, so probably something else was happening).
  • Second, whatever program might have sent an ES_DISPLAY_REQUIRED flag would prevent it also - and that is likely a program that I don't have access to in order to prevent.
I think I'm going to live without checking for the idle state, but I think I will remove the "/f" (Force) flag, which should allow it to shutdown gracefully. (And I'll live with it if if occasionally fails due to a running program.
 

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Minor update.

The computer failed to shut down Thursday night. There was a driver waiting for confirmation to be installed, but that wasn't the issue:
  • I checked the history for the script and it said it ran successfully, but it gave me a message which I looked up which basically said "The shutdown command cannot be executed without the -force option when the computer is in locked mode."
  • Apparently, the computer considers "Sent the command" as successful, whether or not it actually worked. So all my settings for retry every 5 minutes got ignored in this case.
I re-enabled the /f option and it shutdown, but it wasn't in locked mode. Hopefully it will work tonight.
 

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