14

The option exists in the UI, but not in the help displayed in the command line.

thetreat
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  • Which version of windows/schtasks api do you have? – Paxenos Jan 31 '09 at 01:32
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    All of this should now be able to be replaced by the windows scheduled task cmd-lets in powershell. Specifically the New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet cmd-let should allow us to specify the WakeToRun setting. – thetreat May 09 '13 at 21:59
  • Actually this can be done with a powershell cmdlet (sequence) now: https://superuser.com/questions/1632277/what-is-the-command-line-equivalent-for-toggling-wake-the-computer-to-run-this/ – Fizz Mar 10 '21 at 15:10

2 Answers2

16

Are you creating a new task via the schtasks.exe command line, or updating an existing task?

On Vista, schtasks.exe has an /xml option for both /create and /query. With this XML encoding of the task, you can see the WakeToRun node can be set for waking the computer from sleep to run the task:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<Task version="1.2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/2004/02/mit/task">
  <RegistrationInfo>
    ...
  </RegistrationInfo>
  <Triggers />
  <Principals>
    ...
  </Principals>
  <Settings>
    ...
    <WakeToRun>true</WakeToRun>
    ...
  </Settings>
  <Actions Context="Author">
    <Exec>
      <Command>myprogram.exe</Command>
    </Exec>
  </Actions>
</Task>

If you need to create a task from the command line that wakes the computer, you could export the basics of the task to XML, modify this XML to add WakeToRun, then re-import this XML definition. You can do this two ways:

  1. In the Task Scheduler UI, select "Wake the computer to run this task", right-click on the task and Export... to XML. You can then re-import this file on another machine (see below), and Wake-To-Run will be set. or,

  2. Via the command line, create a task with the basics set (action, time, etc). Then, export the XML, programatically add the WakeToRun node (via XSLT or search/replace), then re-import this updated XML:

    schtasks.exe /create /tn /xml MyTask.xml /f

NicJ
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  • Win 10 built-in tasks like `\Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Reboot_AC` can only be updated from under the SYSTEM account, so use `psexec.exe -i -s schtasks ...` – rustyx Jul 18 '19 at 10:15
8

In step 2 the command line; schtasks.exe /create /tn /xml MyTask.xml /f This may kick an error that says; Invalid syntax. Mandatory option 'tn' is missing.

/tn needs a name. This should be

schtasks.exe /create /tn MyTask /xml "C:\MyTask.xml" /f

And if you have or want a space in the name, you can use;

schtasks.exe /create /tn "My Task With Spaces" /xml "C:\My Task With Spaces.xml" /f

Hope this helps...

sra
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BtilEntrails
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