Windows 10: View All Automatic Maintenance Tasks in Windows 10

How to: View All Automatic Maintenance Tasks in Windows 10

How to View All Automatic Maintenance Tasks in Windows 10


Maintenance activity refers to an application or process that helps maintain the health and performance of a Windows PC. Maintenance includes keeping Windows and applications up-to-date, checking security, and running scans for malware. Windows Automatic Management (WAM) is a set of enhancements to the Task Scheduler API you can use to link your applications into the Windows maintenance schedule. Specifically, WAM allows you to add activities that require regular scheduling, but do not have exact time requirements. Instead, WAM relies on the operating system to choose the appropriate time to activate the task throughout the day. The system chooses those times based on minimal impact to the user, PC performance, and energy efficiency.

How Scheduled Maintenance Works

Windows Automatic Maintenance minimizes impact to the PC by scheduling maintenance only when the PC is on and idle. By default, the system performs maintenance daily, starting at 3 AM. (Note that the user may re-schedule when the maintenance occurs.) This daily session is limited to a maximum duration of 1 hour per attempt. If the user is actively using the machine, the system defers maintenance until a later time. The system also suspends any executing maintenance task if the user returns to the PC.

The system restarts a suspended maintenance task during the next idle period; however, the system will not suspend any task marked as critical. Instead, the system allows a critical task to complete, regardless of user action.

Due to the nature of scheduling, some scheduled tasks may not finish: perhaps there are too many scheduled events to fit in the 1 hour maintenance window, or maybe the computer was simply not turned on. In such cases, you can define a task with a deadline. A deadline is defined as a recurring time frame in which the system must successfully perform the task at least once.

If a task misses a deadline, the maintenance scheduler will continue to attempt to execute the task during the maintenance window. Further, the scheduler will not limit itself to the regular 1 hour time limit. Instead, the scheduler extends the duration of the maintenance window in order to complete the delayed task. If the system still cannot complete the task, the Action Center displays a warning notification to the user. The user can then manually initiate the maintenance action from the Action center.

Once the system completes the task (even with a failure error code), the attempt is considered successful. After a successful attempt, the scheduler resets to the regular maintenance schedule, and will attempt the task during the next period.

For more information about "Automatic Maintenance", see: Automatic Maintenance (Windows Dev Center)

This tutorial will show you how to view a list of all automatic maintenance tasks in Windows 10.



Here's How:

1. Open PowerShell.

2. Copy and paste the command below into PowerShell, and press Enter.
*Arrow Get-ScheduledTask | ? {$_.Settings.MaintenanceSettings} | Out-GridView




3. You will now see a list of all automatic maintenance tasks including their TaskPath, TaskName, and current State in Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc). (see screenshots below)








That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Change Automatic Maintenance Settings in Windows 10
• How to Manually Start or Stop Automatic Maintenance in Windows 10
• How to Enable or Disable Automatic Maintenance in Windows 10
• How to Enable or Disable Scheduled System Maintenance in Windows
• How to Prevent Windows 10 from Deleting Thumbnail Cache
• How to Enable or Disable Automatic Maintenance to Wake Up Computer in Windows 10
• How to Specify Automatic Maintenance Time to Run in Windows 10

:)

 

Can I have a tray icon for automatic maintenance windows 10

On windows 8.1 it did always a windows defender scan with automatic maintenance, since I'm using defender on this 10 laptop, I think it will scan on this laptop as well when it does maintenance.

 

How to disable automatic maintenance permanently?

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Windows 10!

In Windows 8.1, you could open the task scheduler and browse to the location: Task Scheduler > Microsoft > Windows > Task Scheduler. You could then eventually, disable
Idle Maintenance & Regular Maintenance. But in Windows 10, these entries are not listed.

In this case, I would suggest you to send your feedback using the Feedback App in Windows 10. To open the feedback app:

• Open Start menu.
• Type Feedback and hit Enter
• Follow the prompts

Hope the information helps.

 

Can I have a tray icon for automatic maintenance windows 10

Ah yes, of course, almost forgot about that *Big Grin
Yeah, the scan happens daily, defender will give you scan reports at the end of the week in your Notification Center.

 

Windows Maintenance never stops

I have "Idle Maintenance" and "Regular Maintenance" disabled in the Task Scheduler.
Now it does not run anymore when idle.

I will defrag my hdd and optimize my ssd manually.
I have scheduled windows defender anti virus scanning automatically once a week.
I do windows updates manually.

I don't think that windows automatic maintenance when idle important is, or is it?

 

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?