Scheduled tasks questions

[bentheimmigrant]

I wrote a simple cmd script to be called up by windows scheduled tasks at 1am and run SyncToy for my backups. The problem is that one of the backup locations is on a network drive, which windows doesn't think is connected until you click on it. So the script starts by opening explorer to that drive, which works fine when run by me.

My question:
Will scheduled tasks (which starts the computer to run) turn off the computer again now that explorer has been opened? Both the script and SyncToy close themselves after they're finished, but I don't know how to close explorer (kill explorer.exe is a bit too heavy handed, unsurprisingly). If I do need to shut the explorer window, how would I do it?

[Yakk]

As a thought:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/44 ... older.html
create an explorer window in a new process. When you create this new process, determine what it's process ID is.

Kill (politely) said process ID, so it closes down nicely. (You could, in theory, even send a WM_CLOSE type message to the window associated with the process).

The "send a windows message to the window" technique should be possible without the "do it in a new process" technique.

I don't know of a way to do either of the above programatically off the top of my head. But it will be possible.

[Ubik]

Wouldn't it make sense to just open the connection to the network drive via command line command? The "net use" command possibly would be one to check: link to Microsoft kb. You can map and disconnect a drive with it.

[Yakk]

Bah, that doesn't answer ben's question. It just solves ben's problem.

[bentheimmigrant]

Wouldn't it make sense to just open the connection to the network drive via command line command? The "net use" command possibly would be one to check: link to Microsoft kb. You can map and disconnect a drive with it.

It is already mapped, all I have to do is navigate to it to activate it, as it were. Remapping it seems excessive (although I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything...)
My method works fine for on-demand runs, and may well work fine with Scheduled Tasks - but I don't know, and testing is more demanding than I want to face at the moment!

Bah, that doesn't answer ben's question. It just solves ben's problem.

This is also the issue!

[Yakk]

Have you tried running "dir" on it instead (or something).

I'm not sure what this "activation" consists of, honestly.

[bentheimmigrant]

Have you tried running "dir" on it instead (or something).

I'm not sure what this "activation" consists of, honestly.

I've not tried dir. The "activation" is simply that when the computer turns on it sometimes thinks that the network drive is disconnected, so I navigate to it, and the PC realises it's connected. If I run synctoy without letting the computer see that the drive is really there, synctoy can't find it, and gives up. Unless you mean you don't know what it consists of on the computer's side, in which case, neither do I.

One of the difficulties in all this is that I can't find a way to reproduce the network drive being "disconnected", as actually disconnecting it unmaps it. So I can't run loads of trials to see what works.

[bentheimmigrant]

Update:

Well, apparently it didn't find the drive. I'll use dir and see if that works, and if not I'll have to remap.

[Sero]

Having done some work with something similar to this recently, and running into similar problems:

When you say you navigate to it and activate it, you mean you bring up, say, my computer, and double click on the disconnected network drive and it connects?

I'm pretty sure all that is doing is accessing the saved connection info and mapping the drive, that it still shows up in my computer doesn't mean it's still mapped.

I ended up using a net use script.

[bentheimmigrant]

Well, single clicking, but yeah. I ended up using net use, and it seems to have worked. It is odd, though, that directing the computer to it doesn't work, even if it was recalling the connection.