Is it possible to disable a scheduled task from the command line in Windows XP?
39,250
Solution 1
The /disable
switch is only a feature of Vista/7/2008R2/2012.
You can simply rename the task .job
file to "disable" it.
schtasks /Create /SC HOURLY /TN "TEST TASK" /TR notepad
schtasks
TaskName Next Run Time Status
==================================== ======================== ===============
TEST TASK 09:45:00, 7/26/2010
move "C:\WINDOWS\Tasks\TEST TASK.job" "C:\WINDOWS\Tasks\TEST TASK.bak"
schtasks
INFO: There are no scheduled tasks present in the system.
In order to "enable" the task rename the .bak
file to .job
:
schtasks
INFO: There are no scheduled tasks present in the system.
move "C:\WINDOWS\Tasks\TEST TASK.bak" "C:\WINDOWS\Tasks\TEST TASK.job"
schtasks
TaskName Next Run Time Status
==================================== ======================== ===============
TEST TASK 09:45:00, 7/26/2010
Solution 2
In order to acheive the run-once behaviour, you could always just code a 'wrapper' bat script that checks for a lock file.
Create the lock file on first run, and every there after the wrapper script will just exit if it finds the lock file:
if exist Lock.file goto :eof
Solution 3
You have to run this code:
SCHTASKS /Change /TN "\yourFolder\yourTask" /Disable
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Author by
John Sibly
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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John Sibly over 1 year
On my Windows 7 machine I can run something like:
schtasks.exe /Change /TN "MyTaskName" /Disable
But /Disable doesn't seem to be available in Windows XP - is there any way of disabling it from the command line?
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John Sibly almost 14 yearsGood idea. However I'd really like it to actually appear as disabled in Task scheduler, so I can enable it again at some point in the future. Normally you could just set it to "Run Once" and set a specific time, but this particular script we need to run on login, and then disable itself.
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jscott almost 14 years@John: Updated my answer to show "enabling" example. Barring that option, you can copy
C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe
binary from a 2003+ install. Place this binary on the XP machine and call it using its explicit path. I have just successfully tested disabling a task created with the XPschtasks
using the 2003schtasks
. -
John Sibly almost 14 yearsThanks for your answers - I'm going to use the Win2003 workaround as this fits our situation better. But the renaming idea may also come in handy at some point too