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Alternative to Windows Task Scheduler GUI?

Writer Emily Wong

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Context: Several recent Windows Updates have added many scheduled tasks about data collecting, performance reporting, blah blah, in preparation for the move to Windows 10. Many users are complaining about all the added bloat. I have to go through the scheduled tasks and disable/remove all that crap, and there's a lot. And each month some more is added, thanks Microsoft.


The issue: The Windows GUI for managing the scheduled tasks is a pain to use. I mean it.

  • It doesn't offer me a view of all the existing tasks. I have to navigate through each and every line in the left panel.
  • When switching from line to line, the main panel doesn't refresh instantly, it takes like 200 ms to redraw. This is VERY frustrating, as one's constantly switching from line to line.

So, is there some third-party utility which doesn't have the above caveats?


Bonus question: are you aware of some place that maintains a list of all these Windows 10-related updates?

3 Answers

To answer my own question, I found TaskSchedulerView by NirSoft, amazing as usual.

You can't fine-edit the tasks, you can only enable/disable them, but this program provides an incredibly useful overview of the scheduled tasks present on your system.

Screenshot of TaskSchedulerView

Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but you can do this from the command line. See at and schtasks commands

To display all tasks type the following with no arguments.

schtask

You can filter/search with the comand:

schtask | find "SearchString"

I had the same problem as you described. Until I found this excellent lightweight freeware (250 KB only):

Freebyte Task Scheduler

Simple but effective:

enter image description here

3

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