In MSE, one of the useful feature is the ability to schedule scan at ghost hour so it can keep your computer safe, yet not interfering with your work. However, in some situations, the scheduled scan might not work as intended. In this post, we will show you how to properly setup a task in your computer. This task will wake your computer at night, carry out the routine scan and shutdown the system after it has finished its work.
Configure MSE
First, open the Start menu and type Security Essentials:
Go to the Setting tab. Activate the “Schedule Scan” option and determine the time that you want it to run.
It’s important to configure this way so Microsoft Security Essentials will create the scheduled task and we can change it to work the way we want.
Modifing the scheduled task
Open the Task Scheduler:
Go toTask Scheduler ->Task Scheduler Library ->Microsoft Antimalware:
Rigth click the created task and select “Properties”.
Go to the Conditions tab, uncheck the option to start the task only if the computer is idle and check the option to wake the computer to run this task.
Note: For the system to wake your computer, your BIOS has to support Advanced Power Management (APM) version 1.2 or later for this to work.
Shutdown the computer after task completion
After configuring the computer to wake at ghost hour to do the scanning, you will find that there is no way to configure it to shut down. Fret noe, we have created a script that will do the job for us.
- Open the Notepad.
- Copy and paste the script below to the notepad: You should see something like this:
Save it as “%userprofile%/shutdownaftermse.bat”.
Now go again to the task, right click and select “Properties”. Go to “Actions” tab and add this script.
Select the file:
Press OK.
That’s it. Your computer will now wake to do the system scanning and shutdown after it has completed its job. What other ways do you use to schedule your scans?
