How To Use Task Scheduler To Create A Repeating Alarm During the Day in Windows 7

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Ok, here is what I was trying to do. I wanted to create an notification repeatedly alarming me to get up and move away from my computer every one hour during every weekday, Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm.

Yes, there are maybe tools out there that can already do so but what I ended up is just using a very useful windows built-in feature, Task Scheduler.

And, here is how.

Step 1: Start Task Scheduler

There are a few ways to launch it. The easiest way could be just click Start  button, start typing in “task scheduler”, and hit Enter.

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Step 2: Create a task

Click Create Task from the Actions section at the right panel. From the popup Create Task window, type in the name of this task under General tab. It could be anything that is easy for you to remember.

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Go to Triggers tab, which is the place you set up the day/time schedule. Click New button near the bottom, and set the following things up in the Edit Trigger window.

  • Select “On a schedule” as the Begin the task.
  • Pick Weekly, check the weekdays that apply, and the start time in the Settings section.
  • Check the option Repeat task every: option and select 1 hour from the dropdown list. Don’t forget to select the time for a duration of, or it won’t stop. In this case, I selected 8 hours. If the time isn’t on the list, you can simply type it in in a right format.
  • Check “Enable” option, and click OK.

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And this is what it looks like after you created a new trigger.

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Then, go to Actions tab, in where you can create any actions you may think of that is good to alarm you from the unawareness. In this experiment, I created 3 tasks, one to lock my screen, one to open a Word document with “Stop Working” in very large font, and another to just display a message on the screen.

To create an action that locks my window, click New button near the bottom, select “Start a program”, type “c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe” in the program box, “user32.dll, LockWorkStation” in the Add arguments box. And hit OK.

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To create an action that displays a message, click “New” button near the bottom, select Display a message from the action dropdown, and type in the title of the message and the content in the message body. And hit OK.

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And here is what it looks like after I created a few actions. Note that, the Task Scheduler launches these actions in sequence, One can only be launched after one above is finished.

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Leave the other tabs as they are. And click OK to finish the step.

Step 3: Test it out

In the main Task Scheduler window, right click the task just created and go to Run.

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And this is the message box popping up after the first two actions are finished.

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And that’s it. This is my very own notification created in Task Scheduler on my Windows 7 that is going to repeatedly ask me to get up and move away from my computer every hour during my week working hour and day.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Hi, Mr. Chen! This trick really works! Now my Windows 7 PC nags me to Log-Off at 4AM! 🙂

    Sometimes I get so addicted surfing the net that I end up sleeping at sunrise. Now I used this trick to make my PC nag me to shut it down at 4AM!

    Thanks again, Sir! 🙂

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