I hit a snag at work today while trying to create a scheduled task to run a batch file daily on a server. The problem was after creating a scheduled task using the wizard, a popup displayed this:
The new task could not be created.
The specific error is:
0x80070005: Access is denied.
Try using the Task page Browse button to locate the application.
Of course, the task wasn’t created. Googling around wasn’t much help…most of the stuff references Windows XP and a bunch of the results want you to go inside the registry. I figured there must be a better way. Something that all the posts had in common was saying that something had changed the permissions on the Windows Tasks directory. So, I figured running CACLS to reset the permissions on that tasks directory should fix things. I was right. So this fix is MUCH simpler than all those forum posts and mailing lists posts said.
To fix: Open up a command prompt and change directory to C:\WINDOWS. Next issue the following command:
CACLS Tasks /E /G builtin\administrators:F
it should echo back ‘processed dir: C\WINDOWS\Tasks’ and return you to a prompt. After this, you should be able to schedule a task quite easily. The skinny of this problem is that the tasks directory just gets its permissions wrong and you’re using CACLS to reset things. Hope this helps someone out there! It took me a couple hours to figure it out!
