For the most part, PCs I own with Windows perform fairly well. But every once-and-a-while I have a problem that drives me crazy.
I have a PC with Windows 10, that I use to run Wires-X. It is the Wires-X node that is on our 2 meter repeater. It has been running for over 9 years. Several years ago, a couple of people wrote programs to allow scheduling of Wires-X to connect or disconnect from Rooms/Nodes, based on a schedule. I thing N9TOW created the first one, which required installing Python and several libraries, then writing schedule files in Python to run at times controlled by Windows Task Scheduler.
This was a great first step, but it required a fair amount of effort to get set up and maintain. Then Bill, W9LBR came up with an improved version that included a GUI to create a schedule. WX Scheduler. This was a big improvement, but still required installing Python and some libraries.
He has continually improved on this program, eventually creating an install which greatly simplified getting it up and running. As it progressed, I have kept up with the changes and it improved every time there was an update.
Along with the WX Scheduler program, I have followed a document from Chris, K9EQ, on how to set up a PC to be able to run unattended and handle all Windows Updates and be able to restart automatically after updates or reboots.
As part of that process, I attempted to Restart wxscheduler.exe by using Task Scheduler to restart it upon restart or login. But it never seemed to work. I would often find WX Scheduler not running after some kind of update, and I would have to restart it manually. I kept trying and trying different things to tweak Task Scheduler, but they never worked. I searched the Event logs but could not find an issue. It looked like it should be running.
I searched and searched online for a solution, but could never find one. I even tried ChapGPT. No help. Then finally, today, I came across what might be the solution. It was part of a Google search, and it was no where near the top. In fact, you had to go in deep and read the details.
In Task Scheduler, uncheck “run whether user is logged in or not”. This was the key. WTH. Why does this innocuous phrase undermine the whole purpose of the task?
My initial tests seemed to indicate that Task Scheduler will now run WX Scheduler when the PC restarts. Now I might really have a PC that will function even if the Windows Updates causes a reboot!
