New Cron For Windows

I’ve posted about Cron before, but that solution, nnCron hasn’t been update in ages and I could never get it to run on Windows 7. I have been using Windows Task Scheduler but I still run into issues where it fails, or you need to be logged into the machine to run tasks. It’s better, but still not as reliable as cron.

I’m always searching around for new tools and recently I discovered a new cron program for Windows called IntelliAdmin Cron.

Much like the old nnCron it’s a simple download and install which sets up a service that runs in the background.

What is neat about IntelliAdmin Cron is that while you can edit the vanilla cron file yourself (see Introduction To Cron) they also provide a neat GUI which allows you to enter some values and it will write the cron record for you:

They add one new value to the list of parameters:

* * * * * 5 "c:\temp\test.vbs"

The sixth value sets how the program is executed:

1 = The process is executed as an administrator
2 = The process is executed as the session user
4 = The process is hidden when executed
8 = The process is executed in the console session
16 = The process will only be executed if someone is logged into the console
32 = The process will be executed in all RDP sessions.
64 = This will disable the job

So in the example above where we have 5: 1 = The process is executed as an administrator + 4 = The process is hidden when executed = 5.

Nice!

IntelliAdmin Cron is free and they have a lot of other useful looking utilities on their site.