How To Schedule Tasks in Windows 7

Ever had a program that you wanted to run when you first turned on your computer, but the program didn’t include an option to do so? That’s where Windows Task Scheduler comes in. Windows Task Scheduler is a handy little tool from Microsoft included in Windows 7 designed to allow you to create your own tasks that can make a program start when you first log on to your computer, make a program (eg. a software updater) run anywhere from every 5 minutes to every hour, or even make a program start whenever another program starts.

This tutorial will teach you how to make a program run when you first start up your computer, but there are many other handy options available to you through Task Scheduler that you should check out to see if any would be useful to you. (Note: Click on the pictures below to view the full-sized picture)

1. Open Windows Task Scheduler. You can do this by typing “Task Scheduler” in the Start Menu’s Search bar.
2. Under the Action menu, click on “Create Task…”



3. Under the Triggers tab, click the New… button. Under the “Begin the task:” drop-down box, select “At startup” and click OK.



4. Under the Actions tab, click the New… button, and type the file’s location in the “Program/script:” field, or click the browse button and open the file in the menu, and then click OK.



5. Go through the other tabs and change any settings that you want, and then click OK. Your task should now be in the Task Scheduler Library, where you can enable it, disable it and even run it immediately if you haven’t already got the program running.