Film-Tech Cinema Systems
  Home     Products     Store     Forum     Warehouse     Contact Us    
Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE


  
my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Film-Yak   » Windows XP Task Scheduler is Worthless to Me (Page 1)

 
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2   
Author Topic: Windows XP Task Scheduler is Worthless to Me
Greg Anderson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 766
From: Ogden Valley, Utah
Registered: Nov 1999

- posted 03-21-2008 10:28 AM      Profile for Greg Anderson   Author's Homepage   Email Greg Anderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I work with both Mac OS-X and Windows XP. There's a nice little function in OS-X which allows you to schedule the computer to shut down and/or start up using a schedule. I tried to find a similar function in Windows XP. All I got was a tip about using "shutdown.exe" through the "Scheduled Tasks" utility in the Control Panel. It is worthless. I can't get the "Scheduled Tasks" to run anything (not just the shutdown function) without first locking up my system with passwords.

I'm the only person who uses my computer and it's physically secure. I have no need/interest in creating a log-in password or any other such paranoid, time-consuming, unnecessary key-stroking nonsense. But I can't seem to use the "Scheduled Tasks" at all without passwords. And that's rather odd to me... since I have more than one company's automatic update reminders running without my ever telling those utilities to place a password into the system.

So... are there any Windows wizards out there in Film-Tech-land who have had any success with and/or love for the Windows XP Scheduled Tasks utility? Or do I just wander back to the OS-X world and conclude, once and for all, that Windows is rubbish? Does the answer lie in Vista? No, wait. I already said I didn't (Are you sure?) want time-wasting (Are you sure?), unnecessary keystrokes (Are you sure?)... so forget Vista. (Are you sure?)

 |  IP: Logged
Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

- posted 03-21-2008 06:20 PM      Profile for Joe Redifer   Author's Homepage   Email Joe Redifer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
First of all, how DARE you insult Windows! It is magnificently programmed and thoroughly enjoyable. When you use Windows, you say "WOW!" Why would you ever think of using anything else? Also, SMART Sound Processors are the best.

 |  IP: Logged
Sean McKinnon
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1712
From: Peabody Massachusetts
Registered: Sep 2000

- posted 03-21-2008 06:36 PM      Profile for Sean McKinnon   Author's Homepage   Email Sean McKinnon   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Greg Anderson
Windows is rubbish

 |  IP: Logged
Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-21-2008 11:44 PM      Profile for Randy Stankey   Email Randy Stankey   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
If the computer is physically secure, as you say it is, why shut it down at all?

Just set the hard drive to spin down and sleep the system after a reasonable period of non-use. (Say 30 minutes.) Then just turn the screen off and walk away.

The biggest consumers of power in a computer are peripherals, hard drives and displays. Your hard drive is spun down and your USB/peripheral chain shuts down when the system sleeps. With the display turned off, your computer uses a very small amount of power. The figure I remember is less than 5 watts.

In the offices where I work we have 10 PCs with varying versions of Windoze, 4 Macs and a Linux box. Four of the box office computers are shut down at night, ostensibly for security reasons. Most of the rest of the computers are left on for days at a time. The Macs are rebooted only for system updates. The Linux machine is virtually never shut down.

I took an old, broken down Dell PC and replaced the hard drive then installed Linux. That computer has been shut down, maybe two or three times since I installed it.

Uptimes on the Macs are probably on the order of several weeks. Uptime on the Linux computer is in the realm of months. The PCs get uptimes anywhere from 12 hours to several days.

None of them are any worse for the wear.

In my office, college policy requires that we set computers for log in access. Besides, they can't be physically secured like yours can. In your case, I don't see any reason to set your computers for log in unless you want to or unless you have multiple users.

My advice: Shut down your display(s) and peripherals. Leave the rest. It won't hurt anything.

BTW: When it comes to Vista... AVOID!

One website for I.T. professionals ran a poll. More than 60% of respondents said that they "Have no plans to upgrade to Vista." Less than 20% said that they would upgrade to Vista when SP1 was available and stabilized. Only about 20% said that they would upgrade at all.

Also, more than 70% of those polled said that their dominant operating system is Linux.

The only place where Windoze has a real majority is in the corporate/office markets where hundreds or thousands of computers must be installed universally and they all have to be exactly the same. If you are outside of that market it would be wise for you to have at least SOME of your computers running (or capable or running) alternate operating systems like Mac OS X or Linux.

If it was my druthers, I say you should have an almost even split between Macs and Linux with only enough Windoze machines to cover your bases when somebody throws a curve at you with some piece of proprietary software that only runs in Windows.

 |  IP: Logged
Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 퍼항시, 경상푹도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

- posted 03-22-2008 01:40 AM      Profile for Chris Slycord   Email Chris Slycord   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Speaking of linux and shutdown/reboot:
I like the kexec feature available in recent kernels. It lets you "reboot linux" but with bypassing the bios. Essentially, the kernel can load and execute another kernel. So I just have a config file for kexec so that when it goes to restart it loads whatever kernel name I specified. Great for quickly restarting if you got a new kernel. Granted, it kills your "uptime"/e-penis but I couldn't care less about that. [Smile]

edit: And there's really no need to have a box dedicated for Windows anymore. virtualbox and vmware both run on linux and mac plus there's parallels that runs only on the mac so installing windows in a virtual machine is no problem. And if you want windows as a dual-boot only then obviously linux dual-boots quite easily and now macs can do it too (through bootcamp).

 |  IP: Logged
Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-22-2008 07:07 AM      Profile for Mark Gulbrandsen   Email Mark Gulbrandsen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Doesn't MAC also have an OS something or other that will also run on a PC? Oh... some of the programs you use probably DON'T run under MAC OS do they? I more or less do agree with Randy though... No need to shut down your puter unless you can't make it secure for some odd reason or other. Also get yourself a flat panel moonitor... prices are so cheap on them these days and they all have that auto sleep "Green Feature". My computer running XP-Pro has literally been turned on going just overr the 3 years mark! BTW: no firewall or anti-virus. I just run adaware every few days.

I recently set up a Dell 2450 server running "Windows Home Server" on it... although there are still a few bugs in WHS its really a pretty nifty program overall... Its based on a cut down version of Windows Server 2003 running an intergral home server program on top. The auto-backup feature is the coolest part of it... you schedule backups of all your computers as often as you want(mine are done daily) and if you loose one of your computers on the network you just run the restore computer CD in what ever machine went flakey on you and its back where it was at yesterdays backup in just a few min. time. The only thing its lacking is RAID 5 ability but then the drive array or pool system it does use is also as unique and if you do loose a drive you don't loose data. The biggest bug with WHS right now is that if you edit stuff at the server it can corrupt that data... sure the Gates folks are working on the fix but then again WHS was and is not meant to be used "at the server"... its intention once setup was to only use it from the workstations and from there its been amazingly stable.

Oh and Joe... Smart still does indeed produce the finest analog processor ever made... The Panastereo CSP-1200 [Big Grin] !!!

Mark

 |  IP: Logged
Sean McKinnon
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1712
From: Peabody Massachusetts
Registered: Sep 2000

- posted 03-22-2008 09:51 AM      Profile for Sean McKinnon   Author's Homepage   Email Sean McKinnon   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Greg Anderson
Windows is rubbish
[Big Grin]

 |  IP: Logged
Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 퍼항시, 경상푹도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

- posted 03-22-2008 11:20 AM      Profile for Chris Slycord   Email Chris Slycord   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
Doesn't MAC also have an OS something or other that will also run on a PC?
No.

Technically speaking, there's no reason Mac OS X shouldn't be able to run on a PC (since Macs are intel-based now) and there is a project where people hacked the release to be able to run on a generic recent PC but the EULA for Apple's OSs only allows for it to be run on Apple hardware. In short: It's possible to get Macintosh OS running on a PC natively but doing so is illegal (and the hacked installation CD is only available via bittorent and such). Personally, I think it's pretty stupid that I can't legally buy the OS and put it on any computer I want.

Though it was funny hearing a recording of a guy calling Apple support and them confused when he said he was running X on a Compaq Presario.

 |  IP: Logged
Greg Anderson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 766
From: Ogden Valley, Utah
Registered: Nov 1999

- posted 03-22-2008 11:43 AM      Profile for Greg Anderson   Author's Homepage   Email Greg Anderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I've long been aware of the concept of leaving a computer running all the time. But I don't have UPS units on all of my home computers and I'd rather turn them off than have them running during, say, thunderstorms or other potential power bumps. Also I have a 7-year-old Mac at home that's still running strong but I hate to leave it on all the time because there's just enough fan noise to bug me on an especially quiet night. (The Intel Macs at work are amazingly quiet!)

And what about laptop computers? I've always felt that the hibernation function makes the system somewhat buggy when they wake up. So I always like a clean reboot when I get to my destination. I've also noticed that sometimes when a computer gets buggy, a full shut-down is much better than a restart (and I've even had this experience with Macs!).

But, besides the idea of a scheduled shut-down, I can see reasons I'd like to use the "Scheduled Tasks" function in XP... if it actually worked. Can anyone tell me that they've used it successfully?

 |  IP: Logged
Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-22-2008 12:48 PM      Profile for Mark Gulbrandsen   Email Mark Gulbrandsen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
I've also noticed that sometimes when a computer gets buggy, a full shut-down is much better than a restart (and I've even had this experience with Macs!).

Thats because XP may be running chkdsk automatically when you boot up the computer. That would tend to clean up minor do-do's on the drive but not anything major. I have UPS's on all my home computers, a large one on the server so it does't take any power bumps when a backup is happenning... it even has dual redundant load sharing power supplies!! Small UPS's can be had for 60 bucks or less today and they more or less make a computer immune to power bumps and surges. I do reccomend one of the larger ones though on important machines... say that would run just the computer for an hour... Its worth it and many come with a replace your computer guarantee if its damaged when plugged into the UPS.

Anyway it sounds to me like someone messed with your XP settings and stuff or you may have taken alot of unknowing power bumps... Have you run a chkdsk/f? That can be done from the command prompt and then at the next re-boot it'll run and repair disk errors you may have. If the problems persist try a repair install or using the repair console function to put it back to your prefrences. If you have never used the repair console just do a google on it to learn about its functions... which are all done through command prompt.

BTW: What are you using Task Scheduler for? I don't know anyone that actually does use it...

Mark

 |  IP: Logged
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

- posted 03-22-2008 12:59 PM      Profile for Bobby Henderson   Email Bobby Henderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Chris Slycord
Technically speaking, there's no reason Mac OS X shouldn't be able to run on a PC (since Macs are intel-based now) and there is a project where people hacked the release to be able to run on a generic recent PC but the EULA for Apple's OSs only allows for it to be run on Apple hardware.
The main stumbling block of installing OSX on hardware not branded by Apple is the BIOS chip. All Windows PCs have the old BIOS chip. Macs have that new EFI Boot strap thingie.

It's easy to natively dual boot Windows XP and OSX on a Mac. You just can't do it so easily on a regular PC.

 |  IP: Logged
Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 퍼항시, 경상푹도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

- posted 03-22-2008 02:32 PM      Profile for Chris Slycord   Email Chris Slycord   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
And they apparently hacked a way to get around that quite some time ago.

 |  IP: Logged
Greg Anderson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 766
From: Ogden Valley, Utah
Registered: Nov 1999

- posted 03-22-2008 02:41 PM      Profile for Greg Anderson   Author's Homepage   Email Greg Anderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
BTW: What are you using Task Scheduler for? I don't know anyone that actually does use it...
Oh, it's just one of my quirks. I love automatic timers. Lights, outdoor sprinklers, bread-making machines, bathroom fans, whatever... they're all more fun when they're run by timers. Even when I'm at home I love to sit around and watch my gadgets run themselves.

 |  IP: Logged
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

- posted 03-22-2008 04:30 PM      Profile for Bobby Henderson   Email Bobby Henderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Sometimes the capability isn't worth the price increase. Sony has another version of the HDTV I purchased that features a RS-232 serial input for home automation capabilities. That, and a glossy bezel around the screen adds over $800 to the price of the TV.

 |  IP: Logged
Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

- posted 03-22-2008 05:39 PM      Profile for Joe Redifer   Author's Homepage   Email Joe Redifer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
Doesn't MAC also have an OS something or other that will also run on a PC? Oh... some of the programs you use probably DON'T run under MAC OS do they?
I wasn't aware that a MAC could have an OS or be an OS in and of itself.

 |  IP: Logged


All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2   
   Close Topic    Move Topic    Delete Topic    next oldest topic   next newest topic
- Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:



Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.3.1.2

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.

© 1999-2020 Film-Tech Cinema Systems, LLC. All rights reserved.