Solved! Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Scheduled Tasks working and then stopping again after a password update
I recently moved a group of Windows Server 2003 servers to a new data center and upon recreating the scheduled tasks from the previous server, the tasks would run fine for about a day and then stop. I would go in and re-enter the password for the user set to run the scheduled task and again the tasks would work for about a day and then stop again.
Here is the solution:
I found that there was a group policy applied to domain controllers (which must have been there by default as this is a 3 month old domain and I didn’t put that policy there). In the “Default Domain Contollers Policy” I found that the “Log on as batch service” setting was being defined:
What would apparently happen was when the job was setup (or the password reset) it would grant the user account Log on as batch service permissions. Then the next time the group policy update came down it would overwrite those setting and NOT have the proper account listed.
To fix the problem I added Domain\DomainAdmins to the policy setting in the group policy and then ran “gpupdate /force” on the problem server to force that policy update. Moments later my job was starting like normal.
The key was that resetting the password would cause the task schedule to update the local security policy and let the task run. Then when the group policy update came down it would wipe out the setting in the local security policy. Some time later I would reset the password, and the task scheduler would add that account back to the Log on as batch service security policy until the group policy pushed another updated, and round and round we’d go.
I wanted to post it up for anyone who still is scratching their head about this one!
Here you can read further information about the problem and the solution.
