Robocopy task scheduler "running"

win11pro, 22h2

In brief.
I have a batch file with robocopy commands which seems works fine when launched manually; but, if I have it launch from the task scheduler, it seems to fully run and disappears (expected behavior), but according to the system scheduler, it keeps running.

Details
I have what should be a simple thing to do.
I want to mirror some of my AppDATA onto a folder on another internal HDD. This is to backup the appdata in case of a system failure.

I am running Robocopy commands in a batch file:

(probably not relevant: The target folder is monitored by SyncThing, and then synced with another PC on my LAN. This target folder is internal to my system, via SATA. The c drive is on an NVMe drive.

I have changed to highest privileges, no change.
I have changed the run as to Win10, no change.
I have added the location of the bat file in the "action" section ("start in"), no change.

It seems to complete it's run in the scheduler, but it says it's still running. This is to be scheduled to run once a day, but if it's still running, I am unsure that it will start up again.

thanks

Have you checked Task Manager to see if the robocopy process is still actually running?

How long does the robocopy process normally take to copy the files?

In your scheduled task, what do you have configured on the triggers tab?

On the settings tab, have you set:

Stop the task if it runs longer than: or have you set that on the triggers tab
If the running task does not end when requested, force it to stop

I doubt that SyncThing has anything to do with your issue.

Press F5 in Task Scheduler to refresh it manually. (The problem is just that it doesn't refresh itself automatically after the batchfile exits.) As a possible workaround, you can make an Action that runs %windir%\System32\wscript.exe as the program/script with the full path to a .vbs file (enclosed in doublequotes) as the parameters. Then in the .vbs file,
...where C:\My scripts\My batchfile.bat is the path to the batchfile. As an aside, it also is possible to make the batchfile run in an invisible command window by adding , 0 at the end of the 2nd line.

Also keep in mind that the Windows Script Host (wscript.exe) will soon no longer be enabled by default on Windows 11, but you can still re-enable it of course.

Finally, on some systems the Windows Script Host may have been blocked:


To remove this restriction from the registry, you can (from an elevated command prompt), run the following commands one by one:
reg delete "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Script Host\Settings" /v Enabled /f
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Script Host\Settings" /v Enabled /f

Quid said:

if I have it launch from the task scheduler, it seems to fully run and disappears (expected behavior), but according to the system scheduler, it keeps running.

Click to expand...

Task scheduler automatically detects when a task starts and then shows its status as Running.
It does not automatically tell you when the task completes & it will keep showing the status as Running until you click on Refresh [on the right-hand side of the TS window] or press the F5 key.


All the best,
Denis

hdmi said:

Press F5 in Task Scheduler to refresh it manually. (The problem is just that it doesn't refresh itself automatically after the batchfile exits.) As a possible workaround, you can make an Action that runs %windir%\System32\wscript.exe as the program/script with the full path to a .vbs file (enclosed in doublequotes) as the parameters. Then in the .vbs file,

Code:

Set wshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
wshShell.Run """%windir%\System32\cmd.exe"" /c start """" ""C:\My scripts\My batchfile.bat"""

...where C:\My scripts\My batchfile.bat is the path to the batchfile. As an aside, it also is possible to make the batchfile run in an invisible command window by adding , 0 at the end of the 2nd line.

Also keep in mind that the Windows Script Host (wscript.exe) will soon no longer be enabled by default on Windows 11, but you can still re-enable it of course.

Finally, on some systems the Windows Script Host may have been blocked:

To remove this restriction from the registry, you can (from an elevated command prompt), run the following commands one by one:
reg delete "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Script Host\Settings" /v Enabled /f
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Script Host\Settings" /v Enabled /f

Click to expand...

Thanks. F5 showed it had stopped.

Regarding Windows script host being deprecated, what does this effect?

I ask because I sometimes use Powershell in the terminal to do simple tasks and have a Perl script running every day.
Does it effect all terminal commands or just stopping script execution?
I presume this effects native windows scripting languages, but will it effect non-native installed languages, such as python and perl?

It affects scripts hosted by the Windows Script Host, so VBScript and JScript, and if you ever loaded other languages for WSH.

It does not affect PowerShell, batch, or other hosts like those that run python or perl.

Quid said:

Regarding Windows script host being deprecated, what does this effect?

I ask because I sometimes use Powershell in the terminal to do simple tasks and have a Perl script running every day.
Does it effect all terminal commands or just stopping script execution?
I presume this effects native windows scripting languages, but will it effect non-native installed languages, such as python and perl?

Click to expand...

It doesn't affect Windows Terminal excepting only if you use Windows Terminal to run the kind of commands and/or scripts that rely on their being able to run wscript.exe in which case you'd need to re-enable that feature after it will be disabled by default. Deprecated means it is no longer under active development and might be later removed through a future Windows update, just like how wmic.exe will also be removed at some point according to Microsoft. But wscript.exe is still a very useful tool IMO, and, I don't think it will be removed anytime soon yet (or so I hope). wscript