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I'm looking for a mechanism to open a single URL in the user's current default browser on a schedule/recurring basis.
I know that if I was writing .Net code to do this, I could simply do something along the lines of Process.Start("http://example.com/somePage.html")
which will cause the default browser to open to that address. Likewise, I can go to Start -> Run
and type in a given address and that too will cause the default browser to open to that address. Using this knowledge, I thought I would create a Windows Scheduled Task where the "Start a program" field was set to the URL I wanted to start. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. When the task runs, the URL is not opened (nor are any browsers).
Can anyone point me in the right direction to make this happen? Ideally, I would like to stay away from 3rd-party utilities, leveraging Windows' Task Scheduler would be great. Also, just to be clear, I'm not looking for a browser plugin to accomplish this.
Also, I'm not looking for anything fancy wrt waking a sleeping computer to carry this task out. I'm fine with just letting this happen only when a user is logged in.
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You will struggle with getting the batch file to actually get launched by Task Scheduler until you read this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4437701/run-a-batch-file-with-windows-task-scheduler
– Matthew Lock – 2016-09-03T09:44:42.170just note that it will open a tab in your default browser, and after a while if you do not close them automatically or manually will degrade the performance of the system – Iman Abidi – 2016-11-28T13:59:09.130
3It may also work if you use that string as the command for your task, but I prefer to edit a batch file than have to look through my tasks if I need something changed. – Windos – 2011-08-10T04:38:40.777
Thanks @Windos, worked a treat. I found that it didn't work when that string was the command itself for my task. Could be that I was doing it wrong (missing "" around URL or something), but I didn't spent any extra time on it as the batch file solution gave me what I needed. – ckittel – 2011-08-10T13:51:25.693
The batch file approach works, but a black dos windows will flash. Is there any way to hide it? Using that string as the command of Task Scheduler doesn't work for me. – Gqqnbig – 2013-07-06T13:12:52.773