How to schedule tasks in Windows using Z-Cron

Posted on December 10, 2008 at 5:45 am

Have you always wanted to make your programs run and open documents on a scheduled time? The Windows Control Panel has Windows Scheduled Task Wizard (shown below) will let you schedule program execution but you will not be able to automatically open a file related to that program.

For example, you can schedule Winamp to run but that will only open Winamp’s interface without doing anything useful like playing an mp3 file.

With Z-Cron, from http://www.z-cron.com/, you can schedule a document or file to be opened by their default executable programs. This way when you set a file to open, its default opening application will run and process that file. In my case, I got all mp3 files registered to Winamp as default player so using Z-Cron I can choose any mp3 file to open at a scheduled time like the example below:

To start making scheduled tasks, click the Task button:

The Task editor will appear. Use the first tab to choose the specific program or file to open:

Click the Scheduler tab to set the time and date of schedule:

You can set the username and password of another Windows user if you want to run the program or file as another account:

Finally, click Save to activate the scheduler. When you close the Z-Cron window, an icon at the quick launch section will appear indicating that the scheduler is active:

Remember that you can set any file to open and not just executable programs. If you need a crontab like scheduler for Windows, Z-Cron will do the job in a few simplified steps.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

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Comments

5 Responses to “How to schedule tasks in Windows using Z-Cron”

Michael The Dumb Tech Geek said on : December 10th, 2008 at 7:27 am

“The Windows Control Panel has Windows Scheduled Task Wizard (shown below) will let you schedule program execution but you will not be able to automatically open a file related to that program.”

I played with this awhile back and may be mistaken, but Windows Media Player saves its playlists as a file. I set up morning wake-up calls by setting that file to run when I wanted to wake up, and it opened WMP and started immediately.

Assuming I’d left the volume at a ‘wakeup’ level, it worked like a charm.

Phao Loo said on : December 10th, 2008 at 10:34 am

That’s cute to set an mp3 to wake me up in the morning this way.

akishore said on : December 12th, 2008 at 11:40 am

Michael, you were able to schedule the Windows Media Player file using Scheduled Tasks in Windows? Or did you schedule Windows Media Player the program to start up and then WMP would automatically open your playlist when started?

Michael The Dumb Tech Geek said on : December 12th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

I selected the playlist file to run on schedule. When the time came, WMP the program opened and the playlist was loaded to Now Playing. I left WMP on Shuffle with the volume pretty high, so it was the perfect alarm.

akishore said on : December 12th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

I’m still confused though because when I go to Scheduled Tasks in Windows, I can only choose programs to schedule, it won’t let me choose files. How did you choose a file? Thanks