Strange scheduled tasks on Windows Server 2003

Schtasks is your friend for this - AT is old and does not (SFAIK) comprehend tasks creates with schtasks. Unfortunately, the Win32_ScheduledTask WMI object is based on AT, otherwise it would be perfect for this.

Unfortunately, neither AT nor schtasks report on the user that the job runs as. There's probably a COM object somewhere that lets you get at that; maybe you could ask on stackoverflow?

If you want to script it you would probably do something like this:

$servers = 'server1','server2','server3'
$allTasks = @()
$servers | %{ 
    $data = schtasks /query /S $_ /fo list
    # Data looks like this:
    # <blank line> 
    # HostName:      [SERVER]
    # TaskName:      [TASK NAME]
    # Next Run Time: 12:00:00 PM, 5/9/2009
    # Status:        [BLANK or SOME ERROR]
    foreach ($line in $data){
        $blob=""|select Host, Task, Next, Status
        [void]$foreach.MoveNext(); $l = $foreach.Current.length;
        $blob.Host = $foreach.current.substring(15, $l-15)
        [void]$foreach.MoveNext(); $l = $foreach.Current.length;
        $blob.Task = $foreach.current.substring(15, $l-15)
        [void]$foreach.MoveNext(); $l = $foreach.Current.length;
        $blob.Next = $foreach.current.substring(15, $l-15)
        [void]$foreach.MoveNext(); $l = $foreach.Current.length;
        $blob.Status = $foreach.current.substring(15, $l-15)
        $allTasks += $blob
    }
}
$allTasks|format-table

This has become an evil code essay - it would be easier to use the /FO csv option to dump to a text file the use import-csv to get the data back into PS, but that way you lose the server name. So instead you get to show off a bit and do custom object creation and hacking around with the foreach enumerator. Calling MoveNext moves you to the next item in the list, so you skip the first empty line of output and then take each of the next 4 lines and make them into something useful.

Troubleshooting scheduled scripts:

1. If you haven't already, check the Scheduled Tasks log file, in the GUI under Advanced > View Log. Search the file for "***" to find the most recent entries, and you may see a little extra error info.

2. Define a log file to capture output, and send both standard out and standard error there. Change any echo OFF to echo ON to be sure you're not supressing any error messages.
   For example, if your script is called ftp.data.cmd then your scheduled task might look like this,

   cmd /c ftp.data.cmd >> ftp.data.log 2>&1

3. Is the script hanging? Maybe the task scheduler is killing the script (hence the CTRL+C error code) after some specified period of time. Add some of these at strategic points in your scipt,

   echo %DATE% %TIME%

4. Are you sure the account running the script has permissions / access to everything in the script?

5. If you can't get any joy, run this command and post the output here, maybe we can start with the scheduling,

   schtasks /query /v /fo LIST /s YOURSERVER