Troubleshooting a scheduled script

PowerShell Help
1

I created a PowerShell script on a Windows Server 2008 R2 server and it works fine when launched interactively.
I created a scheduled task to launch the same script every hour and it looks it is completed, but I don’t see the expected results.
So, I presume that something goes wrong during the scheduled execution or that I made some mistake while creating the scheduled task.
How can I troubleshoot the scheduled execution to detect the problem?
If I insert some write-host statements to debug the script where are they written?
Regards
marius

2

The common issues are credentials are different than what was used to test the task. To keep things simple to troubleshoot, you can leverage:

Add-Content -Path "C:\troubleshoot.log" -Value "Step 1"

Make sure the creds have permissions to the log.

3

I had a similar problem, also on 2008 R2. I could not get the working directory to take, I had to use full path names for everything, which I didn’t want to do. I finally gave up, wrote a .bat file to call the PS script and scheduled the .bat file instead. Then everything worked as it should. As a bonus, I could make changes to the .bat file without having to changed the scheduled task, enter the service account password again, etc.

4

To schedule a PS script I recommend using the SCHTASKS.EXE tool as in:

# To schedule a PowerShell script:

$ScriptPath = 'C:\Sandbox\Monitor-Backup3.ps1'
$TaskName   = 'BackupMonitor'
$TaskRun    = "powershell.exe -NoLogo -NonInteractive -WindowStyle Hidden -Command ""$ScriptPath""" 

# Example: Weekly on Sundays at 2 AM
SCHTASKS.EXE /Create /S $Env:COMPUTERNAME /RU SYSTEM /SC WEEKLY /D SUN /TN $TaskName /TR $TaskRun /ST 02:00 /RL HIGHEST /F 
break

# Example: Daily at 7 AM
SCHTASKS.EXE /Create /S $Env:COMPUTERNAME /RU SYSTEM /SC DAILY /TN $TaskName /TR $TaskRun /ST 07:00 /RL HIGHEST /F 
break

# Run now:
SCHTASKS /Run /TN "\$TaskName"
break

To check whether the script worked or not, or whether it did what it’s supposed to do, I recommend re-writing the script to log its actions to text file. I use this write-log function.