Technology Notebook

Windows XP::Task Scheduler::Network

Trying to get a "listener" program to run at startup from task scheduler. (this thing won't run as a service after all the messing around I've done trying that.)
Scheduler is acting weird on this imaged machine. It is not allowing me to "browse" to an EXE it only presents the registered applications. I can drag an EXE onto it but it won't let me edit the command line or input a "startup folder" which is blank and greyed out. And it just plain won't work.
After a long day I finally have it:
- got JT.EXE from Microsoft -- very user un-friendly. ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/reskit/win2000/jt.zip

- found JTRUN.VBS that provides a more usable front end to JT.EXE at http://www.windowsitpro.com/WindowsScripting/Article/ArticleID/45148/45148.html

- modified and used the above to create a task on that machine with the correct startup folder. (My listener reads a parameter file from the current directory to determine what port to listen on.)
- setup the task to run logged on as a user with appropriate domain and local permissions.
- made exception in XP firewall for the listener. This allowed access locally, but not remotely. I actually had to make a port exception for that incoming port. I think this is because the listener forks a process to listen on the port. (this allows it to have more than one subsequent connection instead of closing down after a single connect session.) And I think the firewall exception is somehow now applying to the child process of the same name.