I bought a new computer (two months old) that runs Windows 7 Professional (64-bit), and, after customizing it a bit to suit my needs, I'm now having a bit of trouble with the Task Scheduler. I do NOT get error messages when I open it; and, according to the Task Status list (in the middle pane), it SAYS it's performing the tasks successfully. And I even see the hard drive's little red light blinking when a scheduled task is being performed. But I can't be sure the tasks are really being performed -- b/c the one I care about the most (the automatic creation of System Restore Points) doesn't seem to be working: When I run the System Restore GUI, none of the new System Restore Points allegedly "created successfully" by the Task Scheduler are listed -- just the ones I'd made manually. I downloaded a (great) 3rd-party Restore Point creator that does this task for me automatically, but I'd still like to get to the root of my Task Scheduler problem. Among its errors:
1) When I click on Display All Running Tasks in the far right pane of Task Scheduler, I get the message, "Task Scheduler service is not available. Task Scheduler will attempt to reconnect to it."
2) When I click on certain individual tasks in the Task Scheduler Library (far left pane), I often get a blank screen in the middle pane, where the detailed data should be.
I've tried numerous solutions proposed online, including deleting certain files lists in the registry. On my computer, the key at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tasks
lists 94 Tasks (!)...
and the key at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree
lists 23 tree files.
But none of my attempted "fixes" corrects the problem.
I've read about five dozen online tech board entrees about this, and still can't figure it out; and I've been on the phone with Microsoft three times, and they, too, are clueless about it. Meantime, I don't have any System Restore Points from before the problem began. Ordinarily, I'd just reinstall Task Scheduler from a distribution disk -- or from my wife's computer, which also runs Windows 7 Professional -- but Task Scheduler isn't a stand-alone file that can be copied -- it's a "snap-in" for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). So I don't know how to replace it.
Finally -- if it's any clue -- the problem seemed to have started around the time I installed Microsoft Security Essentials (which I have since removed), which was also the time I backed up my entire computer onto an external drive.
So...any suggestions/responses to the above?
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