I have 2 scripts working, when I start them manually.
Moving mouse cursor out of Screen:
[system.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms") | out-null
[System.Windows.Forms.Cursor]::Position = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(1999,100)
If there is a chrome browser open with title HUD, put it to kiosk mode:
[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("'Microsoft.VisualBasic")
[Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction]::AppActivate("Hud - Google Chrome")
[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("'System.Windows.Forms")
[System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::SendWait("{F11}")
If I put them in a Scheduled Task on Windows 7 they don't work.
They work if I start a batch file calling the script file
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -noninteractive -command "&C:\Users\Miniuser\Documents\chromeHUD.ps1"
But not if I start the batch file in a Scheduled Task.
It seems in a Scheduled Task I can't acces my UI elements.
Any ideas?
When the script runs as a scheduled task, it runs in a different context/session and there is no GUI that it can "see", nor any way to interact with your existing session.
As alroc answers, it does run under another context/session.
I was not able to find any workaround to get pass this... Using pure powershell... However i was able to get the job done with wscript.
in your PS script, open your chrome with this
(new-object -com wscript.shell).run("http://localhost/",3)
It will open the default browser in full screen. i could use this with sendkeys in the task scheduler!
To run a script as a scheduled task that must interact with the desktop
You have to create a folder (or two on a 64bit-windows):
(32Bit, always) C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\Desktop
(64Bit) C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\Desktop
Related
I'm quite new to powershell. I would like to create a powershell script that starts automatically and writes sth into the window. It should also work with task scheduler. It seems possible to start a program by using Start-Process. For example I start a program and would like to enter a text. How can I do it while it being executable using the task scheduler when a user is not logged in?
I found wshell.SendKeys but it only works when the user is logged in. Any other ideas?
Thanks!
In a file test.ps1 save this.
$wshell = New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell
Start-Process Notepad
Start-Sleep -Seconds 3
$wshell.AppActivate('Notepad')
$wshell.SendKeys('Hello World')
In the task scheduler configure to your needs.
Program: "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe"
Arguments: -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File test.ps1
Paths must be adjusted, try with absolute paths first. Be aware that the scheduled task must be somehow user interactive.
On a Windows 2012 R2 server there is a Powershell script that I can manually invoke to start a process on some EXE, this works just fine.
But when trying to trigger it via a scheduled task (invoking the same script) the start-process within the script just doesn't trigger or finish. Causing the task scheduler to terminate the task due to exceeding the timeout threshold.
Here's the core section of the script:
$exe = "c:\some\app.exe"
$arguments = "-user me -pwd secret"
$process = Start-Process $exe -ArgumentList $arguments -PassThru -Wait
return $process
Is there some way I can get some insights into what start-process is doing or why the same script works when invoked manually but not programmatically?
I want to emphasize that the way the script is invoked from the scheduled task is not a problem! The script triggers because the corresponding log file populates.
Any insights or help on this is greatly appreciated!
quick update on this since I found the problem. It turns out, it had nothing to do with either the powershell script or the scheduled task itself...
On the machine the script is running on, there is a network share that is mapped as the z:\ drive. I use it to save logs to. Now apparently that mapping/mounting is handled differently depending on whether the script is invoked interactively or programatically, because in the latter case it appears that the resoultion of the network path \\network\share\folder1 does not succeed, however there is nothing complaining about it, the process just silently does not start. If however, I point the logs to a physical local path or the explicit full network path itself, there is no problem running the script.
Lesson learned, never trust OS' drive mapping of network paths :D
Cheers
I am struggling with automating download of a file from website that opens a new tab when download is triggered and closes it right before the prompt to Save/Open/Close comes up in the main window. The script itself works just fine when launched manually until I try it in Task Scheduler. It runs great until it snags on the download. I've included a code to capture the URL of the file that needs to be downloaded and then pass it to Invoke-WebRequest which works fine out of PowerShell ISE but doesn't return any results when launched from Task Scheduler. I've included the counter and test file creation into the code to see if contents of do-while execute at all, and all 10 attempts were recorded. It's the part that searches through active URLs that's not returning results when launched via Task Scheduler.
# >> Keep trying to capture the CSV download link
$i = 1
Do {
$i | Add-Content -Path "C:\userfolder\try.txt"
$urls = (New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application).Windows() |
Where-Object {$_.LocationUrl -like "https://sitename.com/ReportViewer*"} |
Where-Object {$_.LocationUrl}
$reportURL = #($urls)[0].LocationURL
$i ++
}
While ($reportURL -eq $NULL -and $i -le 10)
# >> Send download link to web request and save to file
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $reportURL -OutFile "C:\userfolder\ProfileList.csv"
I have tried the Wscript.Shell AppActivate and SendKeys('%S') before but the AppActivate wouldn't work probably because the PowerShell console window was hijakcing focus when launched via Task Scheduler. The task is set to execute powershell.exe with Arguments: C:\userfolder\CPdownload.ps1 -RunType $true, - and Start in: C:\userfolder. Run: only when user is logged in and with highest privileges; configured for Windows Server 2012 R2.
I've also tried launching the shell script through batch file from Task Scheduler with exactly the same result.
Thanks in advance for any pointers.
Probably your task needs to be run in interactive mode. By default scheduled tasks are run in Session 0. You can schedule task for interactive mode with /IT parameter. Check the following link for more info
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb736357(VS.85).aspx
Old post however besides changing the script to interactive mode (this fixes it) you can change the Powershell execution policy to unrestricted (Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted) if you wish to run the script outside of interactive mode. Just thought I'd post as recently come across this myself.
I'm using a Powershell script to perform some automated testing on a web application.
Part of this script runs a small, separate script which basically monitors the web app for pop ups and closes them if they appear. It is called during the main script like so:
Start-Process Powershell.exe -Argumentlist "-file C:\Users\Documents\Monitor.ps1"
At some point though I would like to close the monitor script, perform some commands, and then start the monitor script again.
Is there a way for me to kill the monitor script from the main, without closing the main script as well in the process?
You would want to save it to a variable:
$a = start-process notepad.exe -PassThru
$a.Id
10536
So you could later kill it.
I'm using PowerShell v3.0 to start a new cmd.exe process, in which I then load up the Visual Studio Command Prompt to perform a build, like so:
Start-Process cmd.exe -ArgumentList $cmdArgumentsToRunMsBuildInVsCommandPrompt -WindowStyle $windowStyle -Wait
This works, and it opens a new command prompt window and I can see the build happen, and then when the build is finished the command prompt window closes. I would like to be able to get the text that is written to the command prompt window and store it in a variable, in order to inspect if the build passed or not. I tried using this, but it doesn't work; the $buildOutput variable is empty:
Start-Process cmd.exe -ArgumentList $cmdArgumentsToRunMsBuildInVsCommandPrompt -WindowStyle $windowStyle -Wait -OutVariable buildOutput
Write-Host "Build output = $buildOutput"
This makes sense since the cmd.exe process isn't returning any text; it is just writing it to it's own window. Is there a way for me to be able to store that text in a variable for the original powershell script to use? I know that I can provide a parameter to MsBuild to have it write the build log to a file, but I'm looking for a solution that doesn't involve writing to a log file and having to delete it later.
Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
<# EDIT #>
Thanks for all of the responses so far! A popular suggestion has been to just call MsBuild.exe directly without using cmd.exe. The reason I need to go through cmd.exe is some projects don't build successfully if called directly from MsBuild.exe (e.g. XNA projects). Instead I need to call MsBuild.exe from the Visual Studio Command Prompt so that (I assume) all of the required environmental variables are set. I guess I could just call the VS Command Prompt directly, but it will have the same problem as calling cmd.exe too. If I can't find the VS Command Prompt I fallback to calling MsBuild.exe directly, so those answers are still appreciated.
You can always capture the output of console programs this way:
$output = [string](nuget.exe)
Here I used nuget ($output will contain the available commands list), but you can of course use msbuild.exe with the appropriate arguments.
I've solved my problem using a suggestion from the first comment on my question, which was to write the build output to a log file, consume it, then delete it. This allows me to still show the user the cmd window with the build progress if they need, as well inspect the build output once the build completes. It also still allows me to run the build in another process, so we can use PassThru if we don't want our script to wait for the build to complete before continuing execution.
I've created an Invoke-MsBuild powershell module to make building with MsBuild a snap while providing lots of parameters for additional functionality (returns if build succeeded or failed, can show/hide build window, can wait/not wait for build to finish, can automatically show build log on failed builds, etc.). You can view and download the script from my blog.
$process = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process;
$process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = $false;
$process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = $true;
$process.StartInfo.FileName = "cmd.exe";
$process.StartInfo.Arguments = $cmdArgumentsToRunMsBuildInVsCommandPrompt;
$process.Start();
$outputStream = $process.StandardOutput;
$outputStream.ReadToEnd();
You could also redirect StandardError.
edit: I ended up using #David Brabant's answer
I ran into this problem and created an echo function
function echo()
{
$input
}
which let me do this
$output = &"cmd.exe" $args | echo