How to schedule ATI in Vista Ultimate and WAKE your machine

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by Propup, Jun 7, 2007.

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  1. bcronin

    bcronin Registered Member

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    D'oh, I edited my previous post by mistake rather than posing it as new. Oops. Please see my previous post for the results of my experiment to diable hybrid sleep.
     
  2. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    I don't think it will matter whether you use sleep or hybrid sleep. I'll contact you via PM later today to continue.
     
  3. djktek

    djktek Registered Member

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    I too had mine setup to 'hybrid sleep', so I tried changing it to just regular 'sleep'... and it didn't work either. If it did, I would have been surprised because according to MS documentation, the only difference between them is that in addition to saving to memory, hybrid also saves to disk. But then again, surprise or no surprise, I would have preferred it working... lol

    Anyways, Bob, in case you get it working, please come back and share with us. I believe our issues are the same.

    Thank you.


    p.s. Just to remind you guys of my setup:

    6:55am - I try to wake up the system by running a quick defrag with a '-w' flag on a small partition.

    7:00am - I start the ATI10 from Vista's scheduler. And yes, the task at ATI is set not to run automatically.

    Without the 6:55am job above, ATI doesn't start at all... but with it, as described above, it starts but doesn't complete until I touch my mouse the next time I touch my pc.
     
  4. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    The not-starting part may be this issue:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929463/en-us

    I've been running some tests and corresponding with Bob (bcronin) via PM to see if we can figure out why he has been unable to duplicate my success. To make a long story short, after a couple of days of experimenting with Vista's Task Scheduler, I too conclude that it has a bug that prevents it from completing a task that wakes the PC. The success that I had last Tuesday was a fluke -- I've been unable to reproduce it. The behavior of my machine is exactly as Bob describes in his earlier posts. The PC wakes up on schedule, the TI backup task is started and then the machine gets bored and falls back asleep one or 2 minutes later.

    Curiously, it falls asleep in the middle of the TI backup operation and when you later wake the machine up, the backup continues without missing a beat and completes successfully. The resulting TI archive verifies without error even though it got halted in midstream. Amazing.

    Here are some posts that I've found by searching:
    Task Scheduler Problem
    Another thread with a possible fix described in the last post.
    Another scheduler KB article

    So this is a bug in Vista's scheduler.
     
  5. MrT

    MrT Registered Member

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    Please confirm no point in scheduling??

    Sorry if this is obvious to everyone. But I take it from the above thread that it is useless at the moment to try to schedule backups using Acronis True Image Home 11. Is this correct?

    I do not want to waste any more time than I already have spent on this.

    I am struggling to learn Vista at the moment (have used all the previous Windows versions and DOS) and I was hoping that by now things would work as advertised. Am I correct in deducing that I am at the bottom of another very steep learning curve with Vista and Acronis on Vista? The computer has a sole user (me) so I'd have hoped for a relatively painless transition.

    Could someone confirm that this is an endemic fault (in either or both Acronis and Vista) and that it's not just a problem for some people?

    Thanks.
     
  6. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    MrT:

    If your PC is always on then the Acronis scheduler in TrueImage will work fine. So too will the Vista scheduler. Either one will do the automatic backup for you.

    The problems described in this thread are for those who leave a Vista PC in the "Sleep" state. The Acronis scheduler will not wake up a sleeping PC, so you have to use the Vista scheduler instead. The Vista scheduler will wake a sleeping PC, but it currently has a bug that causes the PC to wake up on schedule and then go back to sleep 2 minutes later.

    If your machine is left on then you won't run into this issue. If it is left in the sleep state then you will, until Microsoft fixes the Vista scheduler.
     
  7. MrT

    MrT Registered Member

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    Thanks, Mark. In that case I'll persevere and see what is the problem with my scheduled unattended backups not running. I must have a setting wrong somewhere.
     
  8. Peter Meinl

    Peter Meinl Registered Member

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    Howto create a Vista scheduled task for TI 11?

    I just wanted to try to schedule as Vista task wit TI11 but TrueImageService.exe seems to no longer exist.
    So how does one create a Vista scheduled task for TI 11?

    I do not want to use the TI scheduler because:
    1. My computer sleeps at night and the TI scheduler does not wake it up.
    2. I want to keep all my scheduled tasks (defrags, virus scans, backups, HD repairs) in one place.
     
  9. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Re: Howto create a Vista scheduled task for TI 11?

    I think it's been renamed in TI 11 to TrueImageHomeService.exe and is now located in the \Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\ folder:
    TIHomeService.jpg
     
  10. djktek

    djktek Registered Member

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    Hi Mark,

    You are right with my "not starting part" issue. I deleted it and created a new task using 'create task' and it's working fine now. Thank you so much for this info.

    As far as this so called 'vista bug' is concerned, it's very interesting to note that none of my other scheduled tasks have this problem. They are all working fine... that is, wake up the system... do their thing... and then go back to sleep. Most take more than 2 minutes to run, i.e. Norton that takes a few hours to run, my pvr that records some of my fave shows... just to name a few. I'm only having this problem with my ATI10. After having said all that, I wonder what these other software makers are doing right?

    Thanks again Mark!
     
  11. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    djktek:

    I have several scheduled tasks also but they all complete very quickly, so I never noticed the problem with Vista's Task Scheduler until scheduling TI backups that take 20 minutes to complete. And to further confuse the issue, my first backup attempt was successful for some unknown reason.

    Out of curiosity, how have you scheduled Norton? I use Symantec Corporate Edition and would like to schedule a virus scan to wake the PC and run weekly, and to schedule Live Update to wake the PC and run daily, but can't seem to find information on starting either of these programs from the command line.

    I also use PerfectDisk 8 but the program has its own scheduler that can wake the PC from sleep without relying on the Vista Scheduler, and that works fine.

    Is your PVR software scheduled by Vista's scheduler or does it have its own?
     
  12. djktek

    djktek Registered Member

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    Hey Mark,

    I schedule within Norton. I don't really do much. I just use the original scheduled task when it was first installed. All I did was change the time. As far as the PVR is concerned, I also schedule within it too and I'm not too sure if it has its own scheduler per se.
     
  13. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    OK. That is also my current setup. Norton's scheduler can't wake up a sleeping PC like the Vista scheduler. Apparently your PVR software can.
     
  14. Menorcaman

    Menorcaman Retired Moderator

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    Hello all,

    Some very important information has surfaced in this thread, which I feel needs to remain readily accessable until the problem is resolved.

    I have therefore included a link to this thread in the forum sticky titled Product Links, FAQs & Useful Forum Threads.

    Regards

    Menorcaman
     
  15. Peter Meinl

    Peter Meinl Registered Member

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    This Problem does still exist with TI11 and Vista x64 SP1RC1.
     
  16. GeorgR.

    GeorgR. Registered Member

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    its ironic that that this thread's title is
    "How to schedule ATI in Vista Ultimate and WAKE your machine"

    just to read that it's actually not working...
     
  17. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    There is now a solution to this problem, thanks to the contributors to this thread and to my neighbor Chris, who understands Windows Applications programming.

    I've written a guide that explains how to set up a Vista Scheduled Task that will wake the PC and perform the scheduled action without falling asleep two minutes after waking up. The PC will remain awake until the scheduled task has completed and then revert to normal Vista power management settings. If there has been no user activity then the PC will go back to sleep after completing the scheduled task.

    My illustrated guide (pdf document) can be downloaded from here.

    A big thanks to Chris for writing the StayAwake utility, which can be downloaded from here.
     
  18. GeorgR.

    GeorgR. Registered Member

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    will certainly be bookmarked. After days creating a working VistaPE with working Acronis Plugin i am back to TI and will certainly take a look at your tips.

    G.
     
  19. djktek

    djktek Registered Member

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    Great job Mark (and Chris)! Seems like a working solution... finally!

    Quick question: When you set it at the start to not fall asleep, does the setting resets back to normal after a reboot?

    My point is, if for whatever reason, the scheduled backup fails or specifically fails to revert to normal Vista power management settings, can I clear it simply by just rebooting or would I have to explicitly set it to revert to normal? Is there also a way to find out what the current setting is?

    Thanks.
     
  20. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    The setting to "stay awake and not fall asleep" is initiated by the thread that requested the setting in the first place. For this program, the thread in question is the one that is running your batch file. As soon as the batch file completes and exits, power management reverts to normal. So you would not need to reboot to clear the setting (although that would definitely clear it); instead you should only need to terminate the batch file.

    This is a description of how the function SetThreadExecutionState works in Vista.

    I don't know how you would query the current setting. If you are a programmer then there is probably a function call that might tell you. Here is the MSDN reference on Vista Power Management.
     
  21. Mr_Crunch

    Mr_Crunch Registered Member

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    Thanks to Mark and Chris for providing this workaround.

    There was one "gotcha" that I ran into, and that was entering the path to the service program in the Task Scheduler.

    With the quotes I was receiving a ResultCode 2147942667 which after a hunt round the net lead to:
    Error# 267 (ERROR_DIRECTORY)
    The directory name is invalid.

    and a suggestion to remove the quotes. However the Vista Task Scheduler would then treat this as "C:\Program Files" <arguments>. (The old space in the path trick!).

    I cursed for a bit, then exported the Task, deleted it, edited the .xml file to remove the quotes, and then imported. Hey presto, no quotes!

    AND, it ran. AND it woke the machine up at 4a.m and ran the backup! I scheduled an earlier task (2am for the XP backup to the Vista machine via the LAN and that worked as well - I guess because the network wakes the machine up?).

    HTH,

    Stewart
     
  22. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    What we really need is for Acronis to come up with a scheduler that , like Raxco's PerfectDisk, can wake a PC to run a task. Then we can stop fxrting around wtih the windows schedulers, writing command lines, etc.
     
  23. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Stewart:

    Network activity can wake a machine if you have Power Management enabled appropriately for the network interface ("Allow this device to wake the computer").

    Glad you got things working and thanks for the info.
     
  24. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Stewart:

    The only thing that I can think of that might have caused this is the format of the command:

    Note that there is a space just before the /script. If this space was missing then that might account for the behavior that you saw. It would be easy to miss this space due to the way the line breaks occur in my pdf article.
     
  25. Mr_Crunch

    Mr_Crunch Registered Member

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    Mark,

    I'm sorry but I spoke too soon! The first run ran as expected, completing with about an hour.

    Unfortunately the subsequent runs start ok at 2am, but the log shows they don't complete until around 6:30am.

    My guess is that it is going back to sleep, and that some other process is waking it up at 6:30am (unless the kids are up to something I'm not aware of!).

    I've been checking out the ShadowProtect forums. Interestingly they have the same problem and the same solution - to use the Windows Task scheduler.

    At this point, I'm clean out of ideas. There must be something else at play here, as this solution works for you.

    Cheers,

    Stewart
     
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