Sim
Administrator
Warning: technical information below - do not attempt to fix this problem yourself unless you have technical problem solving skills with your computer. This is not a recommended fix from Microsoft, and could render your computer useless or vulnerable to external attack (read the security bulletin for workarounds). Proceed at your own risk, or rely on an expert for help. Novice users should consider calling Microsoft tech support for advice. This post is for your information only - I take no responsibility if you break your computer as a result of what I write here.
KB841873, the fix applied via Windows Update recently as a result of Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-022, has been shown to cause Windows Task Scheduler to cease functioning on some computers.
If you rely on Windows Task Scheduler to perform backups, or other critical operations, and you have recently updated your computer with the critical fixes provided by Microsoft, I recommend that you check to see if you task scheduler jobs have actually been running.
Go to your control panel and open the Scheduled Tasks window (if you only get a menu item for Scheduled Tasks, right mouse click on the menu and select "Open"). Look at the Status column on the far right (you might have to scroll across). If any of the entries say "Could not start" - then you have this problem.
If the entries do NOT say "Could not start" and you have verified that your scheduled tasks are indeed operating correcly, then you are not affected by this problem, and you should ignore the rest of this message.
If you DO have problems with the task scheduler, I suggest you uninstall the critical fix - go to "Add or Remove Programs", and uninstall KB841873. Heed my warning at the top of this post - you do this at your own risk !
You will then need to re-set the "run as" password for every entry in your task scheduler - right mouse click on the task entry and select "Properties". On the "task" tab, click on "Set password..." next to the "Run as:" box, and enter the password for the user in "Run as". Click OK to save, and then repeat the process for all the other entries. Tasks should now run as expected.
Note that this problem has been shown to occur on some Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines where the patch has been loaded. I have one WinXP machine which had the problem, and I have another two WinXP machines which did NOT have the problem. I have also verified with other people running Win2K that this problem exists on some of their patched machines too. It may also occur on other versions of Windows, but I have not yet verified this.
I will be keeping an eye out for information from Microsoft about this problem - hopefully they will release a fix for this fix
I only discovered this problem last night after noticing that another task (the nightly chat stats update in the chatroom) hadn't run. It turns out it hadn't been running all week, and neither had my backups of this forum, which are run from my machine using task scheduler ! That could have been catastrophic
KB841873, the fix applied via Windows Update recently as a result of Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-022, has been shown to cause Windows Task Scheduler to cease functioning on some computers.
If you rely on Windows Task Scheduler to perform backups, or other critical operations, and you have recently updated your computer with the critical fixes provided by Microsoft, I recommend that you check to see if you task scheduler jobs have actually been running.
Go to your control panel and open the Scheduled Tasks window (if you only get a menu item for Scheduled Tasks, right mouse click on the menu and select "Open"). Look at the Status column on the far right (you might have to scroll across). If any of the entries say "Could not start" - then you have this problem.
If the entries do NOT say "Could not start" and you have verified that your scheduled tasks are indeed operating correcly, then you are not affected by this problem, and you should ignore the rest of this message.
If you DO have problems with the task scheduler, I suggest you uninstall the critical fix - go to "Add or Remove Programs", and uninstall KB841873. Heed my warning at the top of this post - you do this at your own risk !
You will then need to re-set the "run as" password for every entry in your task scheduler - right mouse click on the task entry and select "Properties". On the "task" tab, click on "Set password..." next to the "Run as:" box, and enter the password for the user in "Run as". Click OK to save, and then repeat the process for all the other entries. Tasks should now run as expected.
Note that this problem has been shown to occur on some Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines where the patch has been loaded. I have one WinXP machine which had the problem, and I have another two WinXP machines which did NOT have the problem. I have also verified with other people running Win2K that this problem exists on some of their patched machines too. It may also occur on other versions of Windows, but I have not yet verified this.
I will be keeping an eye out for information from Microsoft about this problem - hopefully they will release a fix for this fix
I only discovered this problem last night after noticing that another task (the nightly chat stats update in the chatroom) hadn't run. It turns out it hadn't been running all week, and neither had my backups of this forum, which are run from my machine using task scheduler ! That could have been catastrophic
