Windows 10: How to change time of automatic maintenance?

Every single night, between 2:00 and 3:00am, my computer wakes itself up from sleep. The keyboard lights up, both monitor turn on, and the pc starts making noise. It does this because it is doing automatic maintenance.

This wakes me up. Every single night.

It wakes up 2-4 times a night, between 2am and 3am. Every single night, so I am also awake every night from 2am to 3am.

I have changed the settings to a different time, and disabled it from waking up the PC, as you can see here:

https://imgur.com/a/VyyzP4M

These options do absolutely nothing. I'm at a loss here. Please help me, I am being driven insane every single night.

submitted by /u/ChainedHunter
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:)

 

Questions about Automatic Maintenance

I am not sure if there is a better name for Automatic Maintenance, I am referring to Control Panel > System and Security > Security and Maintenance > Maintenance > Automatic Maintenance.

How I know defragmentation is part of Automatic Maintenance:

• Open Defragmenter.
• Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Security and Maintenance > Maintenance > Automatic Maintenance.
• Start Maintenance.
• Go back to defragmenter, you will see it starts running.

Since Automatic Maintenance will try to run during idle time and defragmentation is part of it, my HDD is being (partially) defragmented everyday. Is it harmful to my HDD?

 

Change Automatic Maintenance Settings in Windows 10


I realize that Automatic Maintenance is important and these settings allow one to generally change the time Automatic Maintenance is suppose to run. In my experience Automatic Maintenance rarely runs at the time set. It is randomized and many times runs when I am using my computer to do something else.

The four tasks found in Windows 8.1 TaskScheduler (Idle Maintenance, Maintenance Configurator, Manual Maintenance, and Regular Maintenance) are no longer present in Windows 10 Technical Preview. Using your tutorial from the Eight Forums I could better control when Automatic Maintenance would actually run. I suspect in Windows 10 that a new task named Maintenance Activator now controls Automatic Maintenance. I found this task by running the command powercfg /waketimers and the response was:
Timer set by [SERVICE] \Device\HarddiskVolume2\Windows\System32\svchost.exe (SystemEventsBroker) expires at 5:52:14 AM on 10/20/2014.
Reason: Windows will execute 'Maintenance Activator' scheduled task that requested waking the computer.

I have looked for the Maintenance Activator task by running schtasks /query and by looking in the Task Scheduler under the Active Tasks list, and I cannot find it.

For some reason Microsoft has chosen to really hide this new task. Does anyone now how to unhide the Maintenance Activator task?

 

Change Automatic Maintenance Settings in Windows 10  


I've had some trouble getting Automatic Maintenance to actually wake the computer on a schedule in Windows 10. Changes to the Automatic Maintenance mechanism have made the description in the Control Panel misleading, and most search results about the issue are people trying to prevent Automatic Maintenance from waking the computer. So to that end, here is some information I've put together.

To support Automatic Maintenance, Windows 8 introduced new task settings and a new kind of task: the Automatic Maintenance Task. Unlike other tasks, these tasks do not use triggers. Instead, they define a frequency at which they should run and a frequency at which they must run. When Automatic Maintenance rolls around, the Task Scheduler uses this information to decide which of these tasks get to run during the maintenance period.

Presumably, the new Maintenance Activator task is built into the Task Scheduler and represents the set of all automatic maintenance tasks. It's scheduled to run daily at whatever time you set in the Control Panel (plus a randomized delay, up to four hours by default, and configurable in Group Policy).

In Windows 10, the Maintenance Activator task sets a wake timer only if there are one or more individual maintenance tasks that are set to wake the computer, and you checked the box to allow Automatic Maintenance to wake the computer in the Control Panel. This behavior differs from Windows 8, where the Regular Maintenance task would always wake the computer at the scheduled time if you checked the box in the Control Panel.

For reference, you can use this PowerShell pipeline to list all automatic maintenance tasks:
Code:

Code:

Get-ScheduledTask | ? {$_.Settings.MaintenanceSettings} | Out-GridView

To list only the automatic maintenance tasks which could wake the computer, use this pipeline:
Code:

Code:

Get-ScheduledTask | ? {$_.Settings.WakeToRun -and $_.Settings.MaintenanceSettings} | Out-GridView

Very few automatic maintenance tasks are set to wake the computer, and most of them are disabled most of the time. That means that to have Automatic Maintenance wake the computer reliably at the scheduled time, it's necessary to change some other task to wake the computer. The Windows Defender Verification task is a suitable choice, as it's already set to run daily with a tight deadline.