Sorcha

The task scheduler won't run if the computer's not turned on when the schedule comes up. Different versions of Win vary, but if the machine is off, or if you are using it, it won't generally wait for the next opportunity. It will wait for the next scheduled time. Maybe that's why it hasn't worked for you.

I interrupt mine so often that it works more like an alarm clock than an "assistant." When it tries to run, I abort, and then when I'm done I've been reminded to do (manually) what was scheduled.

It's an imperfect world.

REGCLEAN:

I found that I have an old copy of RegClean that I downloaded from Microsoft about 3 years ago. It was produced by some of their people who apparently had some time on their hands - but was, at that time - unsupported by Microsoft.

I've checked the uSoft web, and it's no longer available directly.

It is/was included in the "Project 98 Resource Kit," so that would be one place to go ($$$). It was supplied there as a "developers' tool." It has proliferated on the web, so there are a couple of places where you can download it.

I downloaded it on recommendation of a PC mfr's support techie - for a specific problem. I've never used it much since, because it's never found anything to clean.

It should make a backup, so you can "restore" things if something goes wrong. The problem is that a registry "restore" adds the old stuff back, but won't necessarily delete "new keys" that may have been added. Registry restore, too frequently used, is one thing that can make it useful to have something like regclean?

It can be a useful utility, but not one that I would run regularly, "just in case it might help," like disk cleanup, scandisk, and defrag.

Incidentally, it is a good idea to run scandisk regularly, preferably just before running defrag, since any lost file clusters or bad disk clusters will be corrected by scandisk so that they don't interfere with defrag.

John