Question

I’m looking for a way to create a file that runs a specific URL in the background at a specific time. I’ll run the service on a timer, and the user won’t be logged in. Basically, the server restarts every day, and I want to run a service at 6AM that just goes to a URL (which will automatically complete some tasks). I was thinking batch file or even AHK..but is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

My comment:
You just want to open a URL that itself start some tasks? Tried iexplore.exe “your url” as a windows task?

Add:
If this don’t work you can just write a small script in vbscript which you fire as task sheduler task.
This script just opens your url:

Dim l_lTimeoutResolve, l_lTimeoutConnect, l_lTimeoutSend, l_lTimeoutReceive, l_sUrl
l_lTimeoutResolve = 5000
l_lTimeoutConnect = 60000
l_lTimeoutSend    = 10000
l_lTimeoutReceive = 10000
l_sUrl            = "http://yoururl"

'Dim l_sRequestText : l_sRequestText = "stuff you want to send"
Dim l_oXML : Set l_oXML = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
l_oXML.setTimeouts l_lTimeoutResolve, l_lTimeoutConnect, l_lTimeoutSend, l_lTimeoutReceive
l_oXML.open "POST", l_sUrl, False
l_oXML.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/xml"
' you can post data and als get a result then to write to a logfile e.g.
'l_oXML.send l_sRequestText
'l_sResponseText = l_oXML.responseText

Pro’s prolly post that you better do this as powershell .NET script instead, but I never get used to that now. If you want todo coding in .NET instead (vbscript is a bit tricky to setup security on windows 2008 servers) then better write a simple .exe file in .NET that you just start.