#task scheduler

I kept experiencing a dip in FPS and I couldn't figure out why. I've followed all of isimp4sims tutorials, I use Process Lasso and ISLC, both of which did make improvements (even more noticeably on my older pc) but, occassionally, it'd sound like my computer was doing overtime and my FPS would drop to 16-20 fps when it should be 60 fps.

I finally realized it was because my computer was running scheduled tasks while I was playing and those tasks were set at high priority. I've since rescheduled all of these tasks to fall outside of my playing hours (and every now and then I find one still scheduled while I'm playing and notice the immediate difference when I fix it) and it's made a huge difference.

So, this is for people on Windows 10 (though it should be same/about the same for other versions of Windows). The first step is to open Task Scheduler. Just click your windows button, start typing the name, and it'll come right up.

This is what you should see and, down at the bottom, you can see all your upcoming tasks.

Do NOT completely disable any of these! Your computer needs to run these things to keep your computer up to date and protected and all that fun stuff. We're just going to change when it does that.

I play late in the evening, and then my computer stays awake for 2 hours before it puts itself to sleep so I have set all my tasks to occur after 1 am. One of the tasks that sucks up a huge amount of CPU usage is related to Windows Defender, we're going to change that one first.

On the left hand side, click the drop down arrow and navigate down to Windows Defender.

Here you can see, I already have mine for after 1am.

Double click on the first task in the list in the upper middle.

Here you can see down near the bottom that this task is set to "Run with highest privileges." Since I'm having this run outside of my hours, I went ahead and left it for this particular set of tasks but insignificant things like Google Chrome updates and iTunes updates, I removed that regardless of what time they run. Now go to the "Triggers" tab.

This is where you'll find the schedule for this task. If it's your first time doing this, there's probably going to be a lot of triggers. Things like, "at startup," "when user logs on," "daily at [time]," and things like that. In this case, Windows Defender is searching for viruses and malware, depending on whether or not you're using other software for this you may want to stick with daily. You can just highlight the triggers and click "Delete" to get rid of them. Then when you only have the one trigger left, just go ahead and click "Edit."

Here's where you can pick the actual schedule. When you're done with that, click "Ok" and this screen will close, then go to the "Conditions" tab.

This section is mostly important for people on a laptop. You can tell it to only start the task if the computer is on AC power, meaning only when it's plugged in, so you don't have to worry about it draining your battery. When you're done here, click "Ok" and then you can move on to the next task.

I would definitely suggest checking Windows Defender, it was a huge offender of having a ton of triggers that ran during my gameplay and you could look at Process Lasso or Task Manager and see that it was sucking up tons of my CPU power. Beyond that, I would just go back to that first screen and scroll through your upcoming tasks, and do your reschedules from there. Just keep checking it throughout the week and eventually you'll get all the pesky ones scheduled outside of your game time.

Again, don't fully disable any of these tasks. Some of them, it won't even allow you to edit, especially ones that say "custom trigger" because your computer depends on this stuff. You really just want to reschedule scans, whether it's scans for viruses or scanning for updates, to still happen on a regularly occurring basis and often, just outside of your peak hours.

How to keep Apps up to date on Windows

How to keep Apps up to date on Windows Keeping your software up to date on Windows is crucial for security, performance, and access to new features. This guide will walk you through various methods to ensure your applications remain current. We’ll cover manual updates, automated tools, and leveraging PowerShell and winget for advanced update management. Please see How to install Winget CLI on…

Hey guys, welcome to let's talk algorithms. This is Venkatesh and today we'll be solving the problem task scheduler. So the problem statement is that, given a list of tasks in term in the form of capital, letters or basically uppercase letters, uppercase characters and a cool of period and the cooler period states that, when you are solving each task after solving each task, basically either you Wait the amount of cool off period or solve other tasks so given these are the conditions, what is the basically written, the least number of intervals? The CPU will take to finish all the given tasks at any point of time. 

So, for a unit of time you will you can solve one task or you can just wait so, given these are the conditions, these are the tasks and a given n, which is cool of period. We have to find the least number of unit time units basically which you can use to solve the given task. So the important consideration here is that, after solving each task, you have to wait the value M. In this case the value is 2. So, let's think of a really brute force approach right. What is the worst way you can solve this problem? The worst way you can solve this problem is, you know, solve a certain task, wait two units of time and so all the tasks again right so yeah. This works right. This is this is like real brute force here. 

You can just wait one task because you solve one a and one and all right, so this is the most possible way to probably solve this problem. How? Because, after solving it ask you're like waiting until the cooldown period and going to the next task, so as you can see, this is a really safe way to do it, but the other way is basically: let's say you solve a task here right then you can. All tasks being because it's a different task since you solved yay you solved B, so it's one unit of time, but the cool of period is two, so either you have to wait or solve some other task, since we have only task a and B here. We don't have anything else to you, know solve, so you can just wait. 

Let'S call W as a wait. I can just are number one, because you don't want to be confused with task W and guess we have one. So we saw a B and then you wait and then you can do the similar thing right so and then you can finally do this. So what is the time taken to solve these tasks and the cool of period? Two is, basically, you see each one. Two three: five six eight. So we took eight units of time to basically solve three years and three betas. So the way we did is we don't understand a pattern here, because the number of tasks between a and B are same. Let'S say the input is something like this yay, the P again and, let's say the full of parodies and is too so. What would you do right, like let's say, do print with like similar approach, as we did above this all yeah you solve B. So you don't have any yes left and you just solve B. 

So you have to wait one. You have to wait one more time, because the cool of period is two and then you solve another D. Wait once you wait one more time and then you solve B, so the number of time basically time units you require to solve. This is also eight units. Think if we can optimize this right, how do we optimize this? We can optimize this by, as we know after solving a task, we have to wait n number of units I'd. So, ideally, we should be greedy in the indicate, in the sense that, after solving a certain task, we should make sure that there are make sure that there are enough. You know other tasks to solve, so that so that will minimize the waiting time. 

How do we do this? Let'S say instead of you know, when the tasks are ABB instead of tasks, starting with EA less if we start, let's start with B, so after solving we after starting, basically after doing the task B, you do task a and then you wait and then you can Do B again, you wait, wait and then P, as you can see just by doing this following this approach, basically solving the bigger problem. First, we've reduced the time by one unit. So the input is this parrot here, as in you have like three units of B and only one unit of here. That'S why you don't see and and that cool of period is a lot which is basically two related to the size of the input. It'S a lot, so that's a reason. The number of time units here is seven, but let's say you have a really large input of varying kinds, and then you have a time of Peter at certain time of period. Solving the bigger task first always gives you the best case complexity. So that is what the intuition here is that you solve the bigger task, the number of the tasks with which, with largest repetition first and then you solve other tasks and then come back to the largest task again, so let's write the all rhythm for this. 

Let'S comment this out so the way we track all the repetition count and everything is that's to encounter int in a counter of since the question mein mentioned that we only have capital letters and then um in the form of tasks. So we can just have a integer array of 26 size, then for each character or basically for each task. What do we do? Is we maintain the repetition here counter of C minus the character J? Basically, it gives you the relative index of a certain task in the counter array, so once we have that, let's sort it right, we we are sorting it, because we want to solve the largest task first and we do have after solving. This is ascending order right. We do we have the largest task now, so the index 25 will have the largest task. So let's declare a variable time, which stores the number of time units we actually require to solve all this thing, so we need an exit condition. 

So, while counter of 25, which piece which has the largest number of tasks as I was discussing, the largest value would be at the index 25, so the exit condition is until the largest value is solved right, the until the largest task is solved. We repeat this thing so in each loop. What do we do? Let'S initialize two variables I and J, which is basically the represents the number of tasks we solve in each loop. So while you do that, the I, while I is less than or equal to N and counter of G greater than zero, what do we do so? This is basically we'll try to solve n number of tasks each time right. The N is basically the cool of period, so, while this is true, counter of G reduce the number of tasks at the XJ increase. 

The time because we solve one task, the y plus plus, which is basically making sure that we only saw a number of tasks and then the value J J could be if basically J. If J is equal to zero, then we want to move it back to the last index. If it's not, then we want to decrement once so once this is done. So when do we exit this, we exit in this inner loop in two cases, one after solving the number of tasks which is like an or we've solved all tasks. Basically, and then counter of J is zero, so arrays dot sort. So one after we do. This will be sort the in the counter array, and one thing to make sure is basically after solving this, make sure it's beef, it's being sold the whole problem if it's being sold break, otherwise we are going to assign time equal to x, plus and minus. 

Hey guys, welcome to let's talk algorithms. This is Venkatesh and today we'll be solving the problem task scheduler. So the problem statement is that, given a list of tasks in term in the form of capital, letters or basically uppercase letters, uppercase characters and a cool of period and the cooler period states that, when you are solving each task after solving each task, basically either you Wait the amount of cool off period or solve other tasks so given these are the conditions, what is the basically written, the least number of intervals? The CPU will take to finish all the given tasks at any point of time. 

So, for a unit of time you will you can solve one task or you can just wait so, given these are the conditions, these are the tasks and a given n, which is cool of period. We have to find the least number of unit time units basically which you can use to solve the given task. So the important consideration here is that, after solving each task, you have to wait the value M. In this case the value is 2. So, let's think of a really brute force approach right. What is the worst way you can solve this problem? The worst way you can solve this problem is, you know, solve a certain task, wait two units of time and so all the tasks again right so yeah. This works right. 

This is this is like real brute force here. You can just wait one task because you solve one a and one and all right, so this is the most possible way to probably solve this problem. How? Because, after solving it ask you're like waiting until the cooldown period and going to the next task, so as you can see, this is a really safe way to do it, but the other way is basically: let's say you solve a task here right then you can. All tasks being because it's a different task since you solved yay you solved B, so it's one unit of time, but the cool of period is two, so either you have to wait or solve some other task, since we have only task a and B here. We don't have anything else to you, know solve, so you can just wait. Let'S call W as a wait. I can just are number one, because you don't want to be confused with task W and guess we have one. 

So we saw a B and then you wait and then you can do the similar thing right so and then you can finally do this. So what is the time taken to solve these tasks and the cool of period? Two is, basically, you see each one. Two three: five six eight. So we took eight units of time to basically solve three years and three betas. So the way we did is we don't understand a pattern here, because the number of tasks between a and B are same. Let'S say the input is something like this yay, the P again and, let's say the full of parodies and is too so. What would you do right, like let's say, do print with like similar approach, as we did above this all yeah you solve B. So you don't have any yes left and you just solve B. So you have to wait one. You have to wait one more time, because the cool of period is two and then you solve another D. 

Wait once you wait one more time and then you solve B, so the number of time basically time units you require to solve. This is also eight units. Think if we can optimize this right, how do we optimize this? We can optimize this by, as we know after solving a task, we have to wait n number of units I'd. So, ideally, we should be greedy in the indicate, in the sense that, after solving a certain task, we should make sure that there are make sure that there are enough. You know other tasks to solve, so that so that will minimize the waiting time. How do we do this? Let'S say instead of you know, when the tasks are ABB instead of tasks, starting with EA less if we start, let's start with B, so after solving we after starting, basically after doing the task B, you do task a and then you wait and then you can Do B again, you wait, wait and then P, as you can see just by doing this following this approach, basically solving the bigger problem. First, we've reduced the time by one unit. 

So the input is this parrot here, as in you have like three units of B and only one unit of here. That'S why you don't see and and that cool of period is a lot which is basically two related to the size of the input. It'S a lot, so that's a reason. The number of time units here is seven, but let's say you have a really large input of varying kinds, and then you have a time of Peter at certain time of period. Solving the bigger task first always gives you the best case complexity. So that is what the intuition here is that you solve the bigger task, the number of the tasks with which, with largest repetition first and then you solve other tasks and then come back to the largest task again, so let's write the all rhythm for this. Let'S comment this out so the way we track all the repetition count and everything is that's to encounter int in a counter of since the question mein mentioned that we only have capital letters and then um in the form of tasks. 

So we can just have a integer array of 26 size, then for each character or basically for each task. What do we do? Is we maintain the repetition here counter of C minus the character J? Basically, it gives you the relative index of a certain task in the counter array, so once we have that, let's sort it right, we we are sorting it, because we want to solve the largest task first and we do have after solving. This is ascending order right. We do we have the largest task now, so the index 25 will have the largest task. So let's declare a variable time, which stores the number of time units we actually require to solve all this thing, so we need an exit condition. So, while counter of 25, which piece which has the largest number of tasks as I was discussing, the largest value would be at the index 25, so the exit condition is until the largest value is solved right, the until the largest task is solved. 

We repeat this thing so in each loop. What do we do? Let'S initialize two variables I and J, which is basically the represents the number of tasks we solve in each loop. So while you do that, the I, while I is less than or equal to N and counter of G greater than zero, what do we do so? This is basically we'll try to solve n number of tasks each time right. The N is basically the cool of period, so, while this is true, counter of G reduce the number of tasks at the XJ increase. The time because we solve one task, the y plus plus, which is basically making sure that we only saw a number of tasks and then the value J J could be if basically J. If J is equal to zero, then we want to move it back to the last index. If it's not, then we want to decrement once so once this is done. So when do we exit this, we exit in this inner loop in two cases, one after solving the number of tasks which is like an or we've solved all tasks. 

In today's show, we wan na how save our powershell script to a file and then we're gon na run that file using a Windows scheduled task. So that way you can get an automated solution right. You want to play hooky, but still get your powershell scripts to run. This is the video for you, but first here's our intro [ Applause, ], [, Music, ] hi. My name is Shane Young with bold zebras. Those guys in today's show is all about taking your powershell scripts and saving them to a file. So then that way we can run them by a schedule task, so we'll walk through saving a file and then we're going to take and make that a scheduled task. We'Ll make it run every 5 minutes just so we can see it run, but it should give you all the mechanics that you need, so you can make more automated solutions right back when I was a full-time administrator where I was all about. How do I automate solutions? So it does the work for me. So I could you know work on my golf game played more solitaire. Look at funny cat videos on their net. Whatever it is you want to do. 

I want to help you do it more with PowerShell and this video comes to us thanks to Kenny. I don't want to give Kenny's last name and where he's from, because I haven't heard back from if he wants to plug, but either way mystery Kenny. If you're out there as videos for you alright, this is a reminder that do you guys have questions leave me comments. Send me emails tweets that type of stuff Kenny asked just a great question. I was like man that'd, be a good topic for video, so I was like give me a day I'll pop the sales video for you, real, quick, not actually for him. I might undo his job, but I'm gon na show him all the foundational stuff I'm gon na show you guys at the same time, so leave me the stuff below and we can always hook up where it makes sense.

 All right. That'S enough! Jibber-Jabber, let's just dive in by switching over here to my desktop and so on. My desktop I've just opened up the PowerShell ISE and I've just got a couple of quick lines that I wrote nothing complicated here right. You could do any script you want, but I just want to do something that would produce some output, so we could take a look at it. What did I do here? So I said git date and then write that out to a file named e colon demo. We'Ll call this log for video right, we'll rename it log for video text and append. So this going to get the current system date and then output it to a file called log for video in the second line, get PS Drive, says: kids, all the drives. All the file system drives on a machine and then it takes those, and it only gives us the ones that are the file system provided right.

Let'S run this real quick same seat, it looks like so highlight just that hit run, and so you can see it's like right. Your C Drive. You got a hundred six gigs free, your D Drive. You'Ve got almost nothing free e F, so it just runs the different system files. Now I could then take that and I kind of mess with so earlier. I ran out of time, but you could pipe this over to select and only select the particular properties you want or reality. If you're gon na make this, I try log it to an Excel workbook right via a CSV and we've covered all of those topics before in other videos, so check this out. If you're like yeah, that's what I want to do. Don'T worry. I'Ve covered how to write to CSV file, and I you know, format that you can control and uh translate from this. 

So anyway, we're gon na take that output. We'Re gon na write that to log for video, also, okay, so append that so, let's run this whole thing one time and see what it should happen so say, run our script and we'll go over here and so there's a log for video just create us a File, if we double click on that, I'm gon na see that it walks Saturday February 10. That'S right dedication here, I'm making this video on a Saturday cuz, well dinners, not ready, and I had a few minutes. So I thought I'd make you video, but anyway, and then you can see, then it followed up here, and so, if we run it a second time when it would close, this run the script again boom. It ran again we'll double click on it, and so then now you can see there's another entry right. This was at 6:09 p.m. in 25 seconds. It took me 24 seconds to get around running in a second time and then there's all the same information. Anyway. We don't really care right. 

This video is not about that simple little script. What this video is about is now that we've figured out the power shell that we want to run on a daily weekly hourly by minute basis. How are we going to take and automate that so the first step is we're going to take all this and we're gon na say, save and I've already saved this almost of a save as this time. But I must say this: the ecole and demo and I'm gon na call this video PS right, video, powershell, terrible name, but it works. Cuz i'll know what it was, you probably wouldn't say, save okay, so that was step one. We saved this PowerShell into a ps1 file. So if we look over here, there is a file, video PS and dot ps1. If I didn't type it and I should've, and so that type of file power show can run, writes PowerShell script file. 

So, let's minimize this, let's minimize this and now, let's type in start aimless, do with spell tasks correctly. Let'S run the task scheduler now I will make this a little bit bigger. So I am NOT a task schedule guru, so I'm not going to try and tell you the intricacies of all the cool things you can do here. There'S a lot you can do here. What I'm more of the style of is, let's create a basic task. My basic kind of guy so we're going to create a basic task. Click a little link over here, we're gon na, give it a name and call it video automation. We could give it a description. Shane made. 

This you'd probably want to make your description a little more descriptive, we'll say next, what's our trigger? How often do I want to run this? I want to do it daily, so we'll say next and then do you want recur every day. You know you can kind of get into really make these schedules anything you want, but we're just gon na go the simple recurs every day and we will do it in a six twelve, thirty, eight, alright, so one minute from now. Hopefully I get this done in one minute, so we'll say next what actions I want. I want to start a program so hit next so for program here. What you need to type in is PowerShell right and so PowerShell dot exe is in the system path. So it's just automatically gon na run, PowerShell dot, exe and then what we're going to do is we're going to pass the PowerShell dot exe de demo. What did I even name, this file? Eco land demo, video PS, PS, one video, PS, PS one. 

So that says pirate PowerShell with that parameter which will run that script. Let me say next, it's like hey. Are you happy with all this? I am so we'll say finish now. It took me a minute earlier to figure out where they were hiding these right back to I'm not a PowerShell task edge or MVP, but if we double click on this guy, we then click on the task. Scheduler library in here you'll see my video automation script right, so we run at 6:12. Oh looks like it next run time: six, twelve, thirty, eight, alright! So it's coming got ta go faster, but if yours isn't showing up, I had this problem earlier today. Right, quick right here and then do a refresh and then you should absolutely see what you created right. Well, protip! I do know some things about task scheduler. So now, if we minimize this - and we wait just a few seconds - let's see six twelve. 

Oh, it looks like it might array: let's double click on it, so there's our six: nine, six, nine six, twelve thirty eight boom. It'S logged right! So now, tomorrow, at six twelve thirty, eight it's gon na run and put that in there and that's really all you need to know right now. We'Ve got a PowerShell script that is running on a scheduled task that we've set up. You can get into scheduled tasks right if we go back over here to task scheduler and you can right click on this guy and go to properties. And so then you can see there's a whole bunch of stuff. You can do here right. So if you need to do more complex things, but I'm not the right guy teaches and I can bother, but I've gotten you to a PowerShell script that will execute on a scheduled tasks.