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Asked: 2026-05-25T16:28:37+00:00

I’m a little embarrassed to ask this. It seems like such a simple thing.

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I’m a little embarrassed to ask this. It seems like such a simple thing. And from all the examples I’ve found and tried, this should be working, but apparently I’m missing something.

I have a very simple powershell script:

[IO.Directory]::SetCurrentDirectory("C:\Program Files (x86)\MyFolder")
cp .\simpleTestScript.ps1 .\sucess.ps1

I’ve run, as admin: Set-ExecutionPolicy remoteSigned -scope localMachine. And I’m scheduling the script as administrator, so there shouldn’t be permission issues. I discovered that “cd” didn’t quite work as expected in powershell, but SetCurrentDirectory is a good stand in. But maybe it’s still a working directory issue. I can run it from a batch file with this line:

powershell.exe -File "C:\Program Files (x86)\MyFolder\simpleTestScript.ps1"

And it runs to completion, copies the file, and life is good.

But

Scheduling that same command (in Win7’s task scheduler) “completes successfully”, but no file is copied.
No change when I put C:\Program Files (x86)\MyFolder\ in the “start in:” field.

So what am I missing here?

Edit, some other things I’ve tried

$scriptDir =  Split-Path $myInvocation.MyCommand.Path
cp $scriptDir\simpleTestScript.ps1 $scriptDir\sucess.ps1

Same behavior

$scriptDir = "C:\Program Files (x86)\MyFolder"
cp $scriptDir\simpleTestScript.ps1 $scriptDir\sucess.ps1

Same behavior

[IO.Directory]::SetCurrentDirectory((Convert-Path (Get-Location -PSProvider FileSystem)))
cp .\simpleTestScript.ps1 .\sucess.ps1

Same behavior. Running as a batch file, it works. But scheduled, it doesn’t copy the file.

I’ve also tried scheduling the batch file which calls the powershell script, which is just plain silly and also doesn’t work.

Edit, part Duex
Oh yeah, this would probably help. This is on windows server 2008 R2. Powershell 2.0

Edit
hmmmmm, the advice out there, including manojlds, works fine when when applying it in windowsXP. So this is a Server 2008 issue.

Edit Finale
So it turns out that it’s a security issue. I’m running as admin to do this, but no, apparently when they changed the scheduler in Vista, they decided to add a “did you really mean to do this?” checkbox. So I’m sorry, StackOverflow and especially to you Manojlds, this turned out to be more of a super-user problem. But damn you Microsoft for adding a new feature that changed the behavior of an old tool. You could have had that checked by default and life would have been good.
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Filling out an answer just so there isn’t an unanswered question out there.

    So it turns out that it’s a security issue. I’m running as admin to do this, but no, apparently when they changed the scheduler in Vista, they decided to add a “did you really mean to do this?” checkbox. So I’m sorry, StackOverflow and especially to you Manojlds, this turned out to be more of a super-user problem. But damn you Microsoft for adding a new feature that changed the behavior of an old tool. You could have had that checked by default and life would have been good.

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