One of my friends that uses Windows XP keeps telling me that he sometimes forgets about our weekly radio show each week and would like some kind of weekly reminder near showtime so if he’s working he’ll be reminded. While a simple program could be created that would automatically remind him, he already has a semi-powerful one that can be used called Scheduled Tasks.

By using Windows Scheduled Tasks to launch his browser to the webpage with the show Java chat a few minutes before showtime he won’t have to remember, the computer will do that for him. Assuming he has the computer powered on and connected to the internet, of course.

Below I created a short tutorial showing step by step how this is accomplished. No programming is required and this works with any URL and most popular browsers.

STEP 1. Navigate to START->Control Panel->Scheduled Tasks
STEP 2. Choose “Add a Scheduled Task”
STEP 3. A wizard will start taking you step-by-step through the process of adding a Scheduled Task. Choose “Next” to continue.

STEP 4. Choose the browser from the dropdown menu you want to launch at the scheduled time. The instructions here will work for Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Opera. The only difference is choosing the correct exe file for the corresponding program. Below is shown choosing Firefox as the browser. You can click “browse” to find browsers not located in the dropdown menu.

STEP 5. Type in a descriptive title for the Scheduled Task. In this example, I chose the text “Start browser at custom page.”

STEP 6. Select the frequency that the Scheduled Task will run. My friend wants this to happen once a week on Friday, so I chose “weekly.” If you want to run something more frequently than daily, like every few hours or minutes, choose daily for now and in a later step you’ll be able to edit with the advanced setting.

STEP 7. Set the time that the browser should launch. I chose five minutes before show time. This is based on the Windows clock so if he is in a different timezone than me (PST) he should adjust this to fit his timezone. For example if he’s in EST, then he would want to use 4:55 PM. Since this is set to happen every week, I choose every “1 week(s).” If this was a bi-monthly event, I’d choose every “2 week(s).”

STEP 8. Scheduled Tasks may require administrator password to run, so if prompted enter in your administrator password. If you don’t have an administrator password set leave this field blank. You can set an administrator password by visiting START->CONTROL PANEL-> Users.

STEP 9. Confirm the information is correct and check the box to open the advanced settings when you click “Finish.” This will allow you the ability to modify the page that the browser launches with at the scheduled interval.

STEP 10. After the EXE part add a space and within double quotes type the page URL you want to navigate to at the scheduled interval. For example, if you wanted to launch Google at this time every day you’d type: “http://www.google.com/”

That’s all there is to launching a webpage at a scheduled interval each day, week or month. This can be useful for reminding yourself to do something at a specific time each day, week or month and doesn’t require any additional program.

How to disable a Scheduled Task
You can also disable a Scheduled Task (instead of deleting it and resetting) by simply right clicking on the task, choosing “Properties” and unchecking the box that says “Enabled” at the bottom of the form.

I have Scheduled Tasks setup to record a talk radio show each day, check for software updates and more. What kinds of Scheduled Tasks do you run every day, week or month?

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