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Frequently Asked Questions
This page contains answers to common questions handled by our support staff,
along with some tips and tricks that we have found useful.
- How do I
register TaskGhost?
-
Troubleshooting TaskGhost when run as a service
-
My job fires twice the first time I run my schedule.
How do I register
TaskGhost?
All major credit cards are accepted.
With your registration, you will receive priority technical support as well
as free product updates.
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Troubleshooting TaskGhost when run as a service
- Question: I followed the User Guide, but my script does not
seem to be running/working.
Answer: First thing to do is look at the system tray on the taskbar.
You should see a little colored clock icon.
- I see no icon.
This means that TaskGhost was probably not registered as a system
service (correctly.)
The correct syntax for registering TaskGhost as a system service is:
"TaskGhost -install"
After registering TaskGhost you will still need to start it by either
rebooting the computer or by using Control Panel/Services applet.
- I see a yellow icon.
This means that TaskGhost is in a startup state and has nothing to
do. If you see this yellow icon persist for more than a couple
seconds, then TaskGhost could not find the AutoRun.vbs file. You may
also see the Yellow icon if it found the AutoRun.vbs file, but it was
flawed such that TaskGhost could not parse it. Double click the yellow
icon to show the TaskGhost window. If the window is empty, there was
no AutoRun.vbs file for TaskGhost to run. (Remember, this AutoRun.vbs
must be in the TaskGhost\Scripts directory.)
If the TaskGhost window contains text, it is most likely describing an
error encountered while parsing the job.
- I see a green icon.
This indicates that TaskGhost is running. This is a good thing as it
indicates that TaskGhost found the AutoRun.vbs file and was able to
parse it. If you still suspect there is a problem, double click the
green icon to bring TaskGhost into the foreground. Read the status
window to better understand what is going wrong. If you see a message
complaining that something couldn't be found, then the problem is most
likely that the PATH for the "LocalSystem" account did not contain the
directory of a program you were trying to run. (The "LocalSystem"
account is different than your USER account when you login.) For more
information on incorrect PATH settings,
click here.
- I see a red icon.
This indicates TaskGhost has stopped. This stopped condition is not
necessarily bad, it simply means that all of the jobs have run to
completion (not necessarily without error.)
- Question: When I run TaskGhost from the command-line it is
very slow to start… and then it fails.
Answer: This happens when you have registered TaskGhost to run
as a service with the –install switch and then tried to launch it from
the command-line. This isn't a legal way to load a service.
If you have registered TaskGhost to run as a service and still want to
run it as an application, you need to specify the –application switch
on the command-line to tell TaskGhost you now wish to run as an
application.
- Question: TaskGhost is running as a service but keeps
complaining that it cannot find the program I want to run.
Answer: The most likely cause of a failed script is that the
syntax of the
AutoRun.vbs was incorrect or the PATH for the "LocalSystem"
account did not have the directory of a program you were trying to
run.
Keep in mind that each log-in account has it own environment. This
means that the PATH information for "JANES" log-in account is probably
not part of the "LocalSystem" account which is the account that
TaskGhost logs itself into.
To resolve this you need only add those directories which contain the
programs that you want TaskGhost to find to the PATH variable for the
system. You can change it here:
Control Panel/System/Environment/System Variables.
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My job fires
twice the first time I run my schedule.
A job can fire twice within a given time period under the following
special circumstances:
- This is the second time this job has run.
- The controlling field is the '*' character.
The above scenario can cause what appears to be a job double firing.
This is because when you use '*' as a field specification, it allows any
value in that field to match, for instance; using '*' in the minute field
will match minutes 0-59.
Say for example; you wish a job to fire every minute and have therefore
constructed the following cron-specification: "* * * * *"
If the current time is 11:23:48 and you run this script, then the job will
fire as expected. However, when the clock rolls over to 11:24:00 the job
will fire again, thus causing the confusion.
This first and second job invocation only had 12 seconds between them, but
yet the cron pattern matching algorithm was working correctly.
All subsequent jobs will fire at or near the top of the minute, i.e.,
11:24:00, 11:25:00, 11:26:00, etc., giving the expected results.
If having a job fire twice as described above is unacceptable, then one
possible workaround would be to qualify the cron-specification.
Example: "* * * * 30"
In this example the job will only fire when the second is 30. I.e.,
11:24:30. However, there is a likelihood the job will be missed all
together if TaskGhost is not allocated CPU cycles during this crucial one
second period.
It is possible however to increase the speed of the TaskGhost timer to
something less than it's default 1 second granularity.
For the advanced User :
The timer that is started in Schedule.vbs is passed a parameter of 1000.
This 1000 indicates the number of milliseconds between clock-ticks. This
value may safely be changed to 500 (1/2 second), 250 (1/4 second), or 100,
(1/10 second), etc..
You should be aware that setting the timer too fast will have the effect
of allocating more CPU to TaskGhost.
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