Saturday, January 30, 2016

Don't have permission to disable scheduled tasks - How To disable them [Random]


I needed to disabled some scheduled tasks that keep trying to rerun GWX.exe, the wonderful Microsoft program that helps user upgrade to Windows 10.

Some notes

  • Scheduled Tasks are stored as files in c:\Windows\System32\Tasks
  • What prevents users from modifying some scheduled tasks is the lack of permission to modify these files. 
  • If you are interested in disabling the Windows 10 Update notification / GWX.exe, I find the comments here useful: http://www.askvg.com/how-to-remove-get-windows-10-app-and-its-icon-from-taskbar. C:\Microsoft\Windows\Setup\gwx and \Microsoft\Windows\Setup\GWXTriggers are the two folders to deal with. 


After you update the folder or specific files associated with tasks, you should then be able to either delete or modify them. You would do this by going the properties dialog box of these files or folder, add login/user as the owner, and then give the login/user permission to modify the file.