Tech Outpost

[Apostolos Spyware Scolder]

Hi to everyone,

I recently discovered a bug in W7 Home Premium 64-bit. (can also be reproduced on 32-bit systems).

I contacted The Microsoft support service in my country, they followed the steps indicated to reproduce the problem and the were able to reproduce it.

Unfortunately, it will take some time until they contact the Microsoft  tech team in the U.S., send some screenshots and find if the Microsoft team in the U.S. is already aware of the problem.

It's nothing very serious, and it's about task scheduler and scheduled tasks function.

If everybody is interested on how the issue could be reproduced, you can send a reply and I wiil provide the steps.

Regards,

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

A hotfix has been released this week regarding Task Scheduler; the Task Scheduler apparently ignores the ''Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed'' option.

Is this the issue you posted about or is it something else? Anyway, I'm interested.

[Apostolos Spyware Scolder]

Hi TomiRed,

It's not the issue you mentionned.

Please follow these steps:

Open Control Panel, then System and security (view by category), then press on the link defragment your hard drive then enable a MONTHLY task with any date you wish. Click ok.

After this, DISABLE the scheduled task you created by unchecking the box.

RESTART your computer.

After reboot follow the same steps to verify that scheduled defragmentation is turned off and click on the link "schedule tasks"

under "defragment your hard drive" link.

The process, "scheduled tasks"  fails to complete and an error message is appearing indicating: {task 0 no longer exists...etc}.

The only workaround is to reenable disk defragmentation, set it to weekly or daily, disable it one more time, RESTART and the problem stops. After that, when you click on the link "scheduled tasks", the process is completing successfully.

This can be produced on Windows 7 systems 64 and 32 bit and it is the "MONTHLY" setting that causes the issue.

If you follow those steps you should be able to reproduce the issue.

I do not wish to have scheduled defragmentation enabled that's how I discovered that bug, confirmed by Microsoft team.

Let me know if you are able to reproduce.

Hope this helps.

Kindest regards,

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

Yes; I can reproduce the bug. Somehow the settings manage to corrupt the Task Scheduler store - which of course shouldn't happen!

Did they give you an ETA on the fix?

[Apostolos Spyware Scolder]

Hi TomiRed,

Thanks for your reply,

If you are not siiting on a chair while you are reading this, please do so.

The ETA was that it will be probably fixed with the upcoming Windows 8 version!!!.

This is an issue known to Microsoft for more than a year with apparently no fix, at least for now.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,