Windows 7 scheduled tasks scripts

[Phasma Phasmatis]

I would like to have windows 7 do backups at night. At night I put my computer to hibernation and I want it to wake up to do a scheduled task, then put itself back to hibernation automatically. How can I set this up?

Also, do you think windows 7's built-in backup is good?

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

1. Configure Windows Backup to run at a specific time

2. Type "Task Scheduler" into the search box in your start menu

3. In the left pane, navigate to Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Windows -> WindowsBackup

4. Look for your backup task in the list. Right click -> Properties

5. Open the Conditions tab, and check "Wake the computer to run this task".

This can wake up your computer when in standby, but I'm not sure it can wake up the computer from hibernate.

Windows Backup should work just fine. It can backup your entire disk, operating system and all, and it saves multiple versions of your backup.

Say you delete a file by accident and you try to recover it, but your computer has backed up since then. All you have to do is look in an older version of the backup to get the file back.

[Phasma Phasmatis]

Thanks!

[Jen Smith]

  On 14/04/2011 at 05:12, Xinok said:

This can wake up your computer when in standby, but I'm not sure it can wake up the computer from hibernate.

It unfortunately wont. When the system is in standby mode, the computer's technically still running, just in a very low power mode with external peripherals powered down. Hibernation on the other hand is dumping the contents of memory to disc and actually kills all power as if you did a shutdown. When the system gets power again, it reads back the hibernation data versus a cold Windows startup. Good if you're planning on moving the computer or losing power, but not horribly practical versus standby otherwise.

Don't think you'll be able to schedule a task on that machine to wake from hibernation. Of course, there's nothing stopping another computer from using a wake-on-LAN call to start it up again, but personally I'd just have it go into standby mode instead of hibernation and use the notes Xinok mentioned above. More flexible, and significantly quicker to get up and running again.

[ManyBeers]

  On 16/04/2011 at 01:54, Jen Smith said:

It unfortunately wont. When the system is in standby mode, the computer's technically still running, just in a very low power mode with external peripherals powered down. Hibernation on the other hand is dumping the contents of memory to disc and actually kills all power as if you did a shutdown. When the system gets power again, it reads back the hibernation data versus a cold Windows startup. Good if you're planning on moving the computer or losing power, but not horribly practical versus standby otherwise.

Don't think you'll be able to schedule a task on that machine to wake from hibernation. Of course, there's nothing stopping another computer from using a wake-on-LAN call to start it up again, but personally I'd just have it go into standby mode instead of hibernation and use the notes Xinok mentioned above. More flexible, and significantly quicker to get up and running again.

Yes it will. My windows7 box wakes up every morning at 6:50 am from hibernation via a scheduled task, with the 'Wake the computer to run this task' enabled.

[Jen Smith]

Sure you're not using a hybrid sleep? That would work of course as there's still a little power. Hibernation completely kills power. Hybrid sleep writes data to the hibernation file then goes into low power mode, which can be woken up by various events. True hibernation dumps memory to disk then completely powers down, would be like asking the task scheduler to turn on a computer cold.

[count0nz]

The Bios has an Alarm feature, Windows may just set this when before the Hybernation ?

[farmeunit]

From what I can find, waking from hiberantion is doable, but depends on hardware to some extent. I have a machine that will NOT wake from hibernation of sleep with Vista installed, so YMMV.

[ManyBeers]

  On 19/04/2011 at 02:00, Jen Smith said:

Sure you're not using a hybrid sleep? That would work of course as there's still a little power. Hibernation completely kills power. Hybrid sleep writes data to the hibernation file then goes into low power mode, which can be woken up by various events. True hibernation dumps memory to disk then completely powers down, would be like asking the task scheduler to turn on a computer cold.

Pretty sure it's hibernating because the only way it will resume is by pressing the power button, or of course letting it wake at my scheduled task time. As you can see in my attached image it will sleep first then it goes into hibernation and powers down. In fact while in sleep mode the power button flashes every 1-2 seconds until it hibernates then everything is off. (Gateway desktop)

I did have a problem getting XP to resume from hibernation via a scheduled task and was never able to do so until I

found Shutter.exe . It will wake a hibernating XP, and i mean hibernating not standby. (Sony laptop)