Task scheduler service is not available.

OS: Windows 10 Ent 64bit version 1709 build 16299.334

Error: Task Scheduler service is not available. Task Scheduler will attempt to reconnect to it.

Details: only happing to one task and the service is running.

Temp Fix: open task>conditions tab>uncheck start only if the following network connection is available.

Related reading: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/ba3857f3-bd51-4cc4-aaad-2bd83e33c7a1/task-scheduler-service-is-not-available-task-scheduler-will-attempt-to-reconnect-to-it?forum=win10itprogeneral

Space bar and other keys deleting characters

Problem: typing some text and if you have to fix some typo your space bar starts deleting characters. Could be a big issue in the command-line. Well for most text applications you can switch between overwrite and insert mode but they all do a poor job at letting you know what mode you’re in.

Solution: “Insert” key, you can press the insert key to switch modes. Really simple but a major pain if your mode changes.

Missing window(s)

Issue: one or more of your windows are missing or off screen. This can happen if you where connected to multiple windows and now aren’t.

These options are geared more for windows 10, in older versions of Windows it was easier to get these to come up.

Option one:

Right click task bar and click “Cascade Windows”

This option moves all windows to the main screen in a cascade view. Useful if all your windows are missing.

Option two:

Shift+right click the missing app icon in task bar and click “Move” and use arrow keys or mouse to move window.

This can move just the missing window back to the main screen

File copy error

The Error: Error 0x80090006: Invalid Signature

The Problem: We have had a few vmware VMs with some file copy problems. And they have produced some very odd messages.

The Workaround: Is to vmotion them to a new host. Seems to be an issue with the hosts physical network cards and network corruption.

Event ID 4227

Warning: Before making any registry changes or system change make sure you have backed up you system and registry.

The issue:

Log Name:      System
Source:        Tcpip
Date:          12/2/2013 11:52:26 AM
Event ID:      4227
Task Category: None
Level:         Warning
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      xxxxxxxx
Description:
TCP/IP failed to establish an outgoing connection because the selected local endpoint was recently used to connect to the same remote endpoint. This error typically occurs when outgoing connections are opened and closed at a high rate, causing all available local ports to be used and forcing TCP/IP to reuse a local port for an outgoing connection. To minimize the risk of data corruption, the TCP/IP standard requires a minimum time period to elapse between successive connections from a given local endpoint to a given remote endpoint.

The fix:

• First use TCPview or netstat to view how many ports and connections are in use

Fix 1:

You can check the registry and via the command line to see the dynamic port pool size. And change it as need be.

To do it via registry key view HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\MaxUserPort and see what that value is set to. Note this key might not exist you can create it if need be. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938196.aspx. To do this as command line “netsh int ipv4 show dynamicport tcp” you can see more examples at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929851/en-us if you are running out of ports you can use the command to increase the pool or change the reg key to complete this task.

Fix 2:

This might also be caused by the connection wait delay, if you have this problem you will find lots of connections in a time_wait status in TCPview or netstat.

If this is your problem you can adjust the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\TcpTimedWaitDelay http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938217.aspx to resolve this issue. Note again this key might not exist

 

Additional helpful link:

http://www.ittrainingday.com/2012/12/windows-server-tcp-port-starvation.html

large system volume information folder

The problem:

A very large “system volume information” folder at the root of one of your windows drives. My issues turned out to be shadow copies from C drive stored on D. And D was low on space.

More Information:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/11/20/55764.aspx?Redirected=true

The fix (for VSS/volume shadow copies):

1. Checked the volume shadow copies and they where disabled on both C and D (but C drive listed 90GB used on D drive)
2. As they where disabled to run in the first place (my guess is my backup software created them)
3. I stopped “volume shadow copy” service
4. Start “volume shadow copy” service
5. Checked shadow copies and reported 0 used for both C and D drive.

 

If you need to perform this on windows past 2003 view http://blog.itprohelp.com/2010/04/system-volume-information-folder-it.html

Windows User profiles

This is going to be a mixed topic about user profile management.

Note: never delete a user profile out of Documents and Settings or Users. This will only remove the profile’s data, but not its information in the registry. This will cause errors later like unknown profiles.

How to correctly remove Windows profiles

1. Open System in Control Panel.
2. On the Advanced tab, under User Profiles, click Settings.
3. Under Profiles stored on this computer, click the user profile you want to delete, and then click Delete.

Automated way to remove profiles

• Use command line tool “delprof.exe”, works great for a terminal server’s with hundreds of profiles.
• Tool can be downloaded from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5405
• You can find some good scripts as well just make sure they delete the registry data for the profile as well.

How to delete profiles with “NTUSER.DAT in use“

1. Make sure the user is not logged in
2. reboot system, if reboot did not unlock ntuser.dat move on
3. download “User Profile Hive Cleanup Service” from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6676
4. install
5. reboot
6. ntuser.dat should no longer be in use.

• Note: this sometimes will also clean up profiles listed as unknown
• Note: most “unlock” utilities will not unlock this .dat file.

Task Scheduler error {0}

The Error:

“The selected task “{0}” no longer exists. to see the current task, click refresh”

The Problem:

A task is out of sync with task scheduler

The Fix:

1. make sure you have a backup of your C drive before you try the below steps
2. Open task scheduler
3. click the top most tree
4. Count the number of errors you click ok on.
5. close task scheduler (must do this step as you will only get the error once)
6. Open task scheduler
7. expand the task tree (don’t click on the top of the tree)
8. start going down the tree task by task and click on each one. Record what tasks give you the errors and until you find all of them you counted in step 3
9. go to %SystemFolder%\Tasks
10. find the tasks that gave you the error and delete them.
11. reopen task scheduler and the errors should be gone if completed correctly.

In my case I only had one with an error and it was disk defrag, so I opened up disk defrag and disabled the schedule and re-enabled it to recreate the window task.

Dr watson log and dmp location large

Problem:

Docuemnts and Setttings>userid>local settings> application Data>microsoft>Dr watson file: drwtsn32.log and file: user.dmp might be large and using up valuable space.

Fix:

Dr watson is activated at time of an program crash, its safe to delete these two files if you don’t need the data or if they are just old.

Server hangs from RDP reboot

Problem:

Do a GUI reboot from RDP session, and RDP closes/no longer works but never reboots server because windows hung. (mostly found out by checking console)

Best way to try and prevent:

use shutdown command

“shutdown /r” may need /f option, also switches could be different depending on  your windows version.