Hi,

I'm running XP Pro. I want my machine to reboot itself several times daily (morning, afternoon and evening). How can i do this? Hope someone can point me in the right direction!

Thanks,
Graham Glynn

The reason for wanting to reboot XP daily at regular intervals during the day is because I am running a webcam from this machine using dial-up FTP (unfortunately dont have ADSL in the area...yet!). The machine runs remotely and takes pictures all day long, I want to reboot the machine at regular intervals to prevent the FTP software from locking-up and generally just to keep the whole system running smoothly so I can guarntee the system will keep doing what its supposed to do!

The machine runs a webcam on Strandhill Beach in my hometown Sligo in Ireland. The camera takes a photo of the beach every 30 minutes so surfers can get an idea of the weather/ surf conditions on this very popular surf beach!

Have a look!

www.strandhillsurfcam.com

Hope this explains my query a bit more!

Graham

I would say the BEST way would be to write an application to do that... BUT, if you do not program, then use TaskSchedular, in combination with a console mode (or, parameterizeable GUI program that can take command switches in a shortcut for instance) app for rebooting the system, & use a batchfile possibly to drive it (here is where you can pass commandline parms to it via batch with other stuff I mention like errlevels... The batchfile part MAY not be necessary though! Really depends on what you want to do errorlevels recording wise & what-not, & some apps even offer that too 'automagically' for logging to eventlog, &/or files, etc.!)

The tough part?

Logging back on!

You'd have to set your system to allow automatic logons (no click of a username, no password required, etc.)...

TweakUI for instance, iirc, can set this option of 'autologon' for you!

So... that all said, here are the ingredients I would use (actually I would write a program to manage the reboot & scheduling but again, if you do not code? You have to use tools):

1.) A reboot app of somekind (I can email you these, but at sites like http://www.jsiinc.com/reghack.htm you can find these by searching "reboot" or "free" there, they have free tools for this too).

2.) Task Scheduler (native part of your operating system for scheduling repetitive tasks)

* And, again, possibly driving #1 in batch for punching out errorlevels into files to record success/failure of the reboot program operations etc. if the app does not offer this natively or via commandline switch/config file, & also for passing in commandline parameters if you choose NOT to use shortcut files parms as an alternate method if commandline switches are required.

APK

P.S.=> Others here may have ideas for this, & maybe even SPECIFIC tools &/or batches they can give you... lots of network administrators &/or techs here, may have prebuilt stuff you can use that is small enough to send via email, & if batchdriven? EASY to customize for YOUR needs! apk

"I want to reboot the machine at regular intervals to prevent the FTP software from locking-up and generally just to keep the whole system running smoothly so I can guarntee the system will keep doing what its supposed to do!
"

What FTP software are you using? Have you already experienced these types of issues as above? I would suggest that you should not need to reboot the PC for this, this is not a Win9x system; perhaps restart the FTP service if it is locking up; or better yet try another.

If you truly want to do this, you can use the task scheduler in combination with the built-in shutdown command. From a command prompt, type shutdown /? for more information; simplest way is "shutdown -r -t 00" -r signifies reboot and -t is time in seconds. Schedule this when you want it to run.

Now of course what was mentioned above regarding logging on may make a difference as well. Are all of your applications running on this machine services?

If they are the you can use the AT command to schedule the reboot and never have to logon to the PC at all.

If however you are not and have applications that you need to logon with, you will need to setup an automatic login, TweakUI as mentioned above will allow you to do this. Further, you should use the task scheduler to schedule both the shutdown command as well as the applications you need to run.

Lastly, the difference between the AT command and the task scheduler aside from the latter being GUI with the former command line, is that the task scheduler will ask you whose credentials to login with, while the AT command will run your scheduled task under the local system credentials.
Hope this helps, but as above, rebooting really shouldn't be the answer here.

Go to www.karenware.com and download "Showstopper" it should do all of this!

Good Luck!

Kay
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Keep on trying, no matter how hard it seems, it will get easier!

Why use untrusted 3rd party code when there is the functionality in Windows?

Using Task Scheduler, create a task (repeating daily, at your desired time) for the following:

SHUTDOWN -r -t 01

More information can be read here:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/shutcut.php
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=317371

Note that the Microsoft KB article refers to Windows 2000, but the SHUTDOWN command has the same functionality as the Windows XP version.

Hmmm,


I hate when people spit out instructions on how to do something and its not correct. Yes you can reboot a PC from a command line with shutdown -r and yes you can schdule the task manager to run the command prompt. You can NOT however schdule the command prompt to run with the syntax shutdown -r automaticaly.

I my self am looking for a way to do this to build a little stability into a basic server I have using XP Pro. If I discover the way I will post how to do it.

Dave

Originally posted by glazer:

"Yes you can reboot a PC from a command line with shutdown -r and yes you can schdule the task manager to run the command prompt. You can NOT however schdule the command prompt to run with the syntax shutdown -r automaticaly."

Create a batch file with the shutdown command SHUTDOWN -r -t 01 in it then have task scheduler run the batch file.