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It's 19:01 now. This is what the Scheduled Tasks window on my Windows Server 2016 shows:

unreliable task

As you can see, the highlighted task is:

  • triggered to run at xx:15 every hour,
  • is scheduled to run again at 19:15 and
  • last ran at 16:15.

When I checked about an hour ago, the "Next Run Time" was "08.02.2017 18:15:00". However, as you can see in the screen shot, it did not run, and the task history does not tell me why.

For completeness, the remaining settings of the task are:

  • General tab: SYSTEM account, "run with highest privileges".
  • Conditions tab: none checked.
  • Settings tab: "Allow task to be run on demand", "Stop the task if it runs longer than 3 days" and "If the running task does not end when requested, force it to stop" are checked. If the task is already running, "Do not start a new instance" is selected.

What steps can I take to find out why the task does not start sometimes?

Heinzi
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1 Answers1

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It seems there are some recent changes on task scheduler behaviour (windows 10, windows server 2016). Your task will probably start today at 14:15, and then it will repeat every hour for 1 day. But, if you change something and save the task, or if the operative system restarts, the task will only run after it reaches a trigger point, which will be the next 14:15 hour schedule.

I think this is an important change that I have not seen documented by Microsoft, and in my opinion it should be. It changes a behaviour that was standard for many years...

Carlos Maia

Carlos Maia
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  • I did a bit more research and, apparently, at has always been that way: See the first comment [on this question](http://stackoverflow.com/a/4250516/87698)). – Heinzi Feb 09 '17 at 13:20