Here's a little tip to remember when scheduling tasks on a PC. If you setup a scheduled task to run as a specific user other than yourself (maybe in the case of a server maintenance job) you'll have to give that user some specific permissions so that the task will run unattended. The typical symptom of not having permissions setup correctly is the status "Could not start". A quick fix is to make the user a member of the Administrator's group. You don't want to do that, but it will tell you that the problem is likely permissions if the task runs as an admin. Once you determine it's a permissions problem, here are several things to verify:
- Make sure the user has Read + Executable permission on the file being executed.
- Make sure the user has proper permissions to access any resources being read or modified as part of the task's operation. If it's writing a log file to disk, it should have Write permission to the folder and file it's writing to.
- Make sure the user has permission to execute C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe
- Make sure the user is listed in the "Log on as a batch job" in the computer's local policies. (And not specifically listed in the "Deny log on as batch job" policy).