Info\Question: Scheduling Not Working w\Hibernation?

[TeMerc]

I've had a user in support struggling to try to figure out why scheduling would not function.

We checked that the task scheduler service was up and running. No go.

Then he came back two days later saying a scheduled scan had completed, but we had no idea why. We had hope.

The following day it failed the same scheduled scan. He was set to accept to have to do it manually. I asked about Windows updates, as it was just after Feb patch day, but we really could not tell exactly when any change occurred.

Then he mentioned his pc was hibernating. And I asked him to test that, knowing that hibernation has caused all sorts of weird problems in the past.

So he made some changes and found that when hibernation is enabled the scheduled scan would not run.

Vista SP1

Has anyone else come across this? I didn't search the forums so I may have missed it.

[sho-dan]

Hello Tom

Info only:

I belive hibernation/sleep basically shuts down and turns off the power to the peripherals (monitor, hard drives etc.), essentially it turns it off with any and all applications running.

[exile360]

You might have to manually edit the task to wake the computer from sleep/hibernation as some scheduled tasks do and some don't.

Just as a side note, Sleep is far superior in Vista to Hibernate as it stores everything in RAM and brings the PC back up instantly vs Hibernate which saves to the HDD and is "slow to stir".

[TeMerc]

Thanks guys.

Good to have this info out here in the public so others may benefit by it.

[TeMerc]

Some clarity from the user:

Thanks for the posting. The forum's discussion prompted me to take a closer

look of my sleep/hibernation settings. What I have been using regarding to

the sleep/hibernation issue turned out to be a *combination* approach: I

use a Power Option Setting of *Energy Star* with 15 minutes setting for Turn

off the display and 20 minutes setting for Put the computer to *sleep*.

Then I use the Special *Sleep* Keyboard Button (HP) to manually put it to

sleep or wake it up.

So I *miscommunicated* in using the word "hibernation" and in fact when I

used the Start to shut down or restart the PC, there is no option of

"hibernation" to click at all, unlike Sleep, Shut Down, etc.

Then I revised the Power Option to *Never/Never* (which effectively excluded

the scheduled setting), and used the manual clicking of the Sleep button.

The 1:00 PM came and went without the scheduled scan occuring. Upon further

examination to my surprise I found that the "Start Protection" was not

enabled in Malwarebytes. But I have never disabled it and *somehow it has a

mind of its own.*

[exile360]

In Vista Hibernation is the default sleep state for most systems, especially laptops. It will be listed under the Advanced plan settings and will be called Hybrid Sleep. The only way to disable hibernation (which is my preference) is to run this command from an administrative command prompt to turn off the old XP-style hybernation

powercfg -h off

This will disable saving of processes in memory to the hard drive and store it in RAM instead. I don't know if this would fix it or not, but I do know that when I set a scheduled task and set it to wake my computer, it wakes up and performs the task just fine.

[TeMerc]

Some more from the same user:

The 1:00 PM came and went without the scheduled scan occurring. So I have to use manual scanning. Otherwise I have to *EITHER* leave the PC in awaken state (Unless I bother to schedule a wake up before the scheduled scanning) *OR* never get to the sleep state by Power Options or the special sleep key.

[exile360]

If hibernation were disabled via my instructions above and the scheduled scan task were altered to wake the PC from sleep (configurable under scheduled tasks) then it would wake up, do the scan, then go back to sleep. I'm not sure if it would still work with hibernation enabled because honestly, I've never tried it.

[TeMerc]

Continued update from user:

After I have

1. a) followed Exlile360's suggestion in using "powercfg -h off" and
   
2. b ) used *WakeupOnStandBy to wake the PC a few minutes before the *scheduled scan time
   

,

*the *scheduled scanning works (at least today, and no reason for it not

working tomorrow.) Then the Power Options setting of 15/20 minutes put it

back to sleep.

Hope the problem is finally solved. Like to thank everyone in helping this

out.

[exile360]

Excellent, I'm glad it's working, and hopefully it will continue to. If the user wishes to further customize it, they can set the scheduled scans to only occure when not on battery power to save battery life if it's a laptop. If it's a desktop, then it's obviously irrelevant.

[TeMerc]

Certainly some weirdness going on here:

"The 1:00 PM came and went without the scheduled scan occurring. Upon

further examination to my surprise I found that the "Start Protection" was

not enabled in Malwarebytes. But I have never disabled it and *somehow it

has a mind of its own.*"

Not sure whether CCleaner and the Vista's Disk Cleanup has anything to do

with it.

[GT500]

You've had them reinstall, and do mbam-clean, right? That should fix the issue with the protection module not starting, at the very least.

[TeMerc]

Further update

Followed the following instructions to the letter yesterday. Today's 1:00

PM came and went without the scheduled scan occurring. I verified

"Protection Module is enabled." So there is something very trouble some.

Posted by: *RubbeR DuckY* Oct 24 2008, 07:19 PM If you are having any

problems with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware protection please do the following.

1. Uninstall Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware using Add/Remove programs in the

control panel.

2. Restart your computer (very important).

3. Download and run http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam-clean.exe.

4. It will ask to restart your computer (please allow it to).

5. After the computer restarts, install the latest version from

http://www.download.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-...&tag=button

.

Note: You will need to reactivate the program using the license you were

[TeMerc]

Further:

After noticing that WakeupOnStandby did not wake up my PC today before 1:00

PM, I examined its status.

To my surprise the settings of its main interface page were changed, with no

trace on how and why it happened after the successful operation for 4 days.

While I'll reset it to see how it lasts this time, I am also wondering why

Malwarebytes cannot get the scheduling working easily (for the users) like

NOD32 or SUPERAntiSpyware, and many others.

[GT500]

Question: Does the computer hibernate when not in use? It's possible that the computer is in hibernation mode when the scan tries to run, and that would prevent it from running.

[TeMerc]

Latest info from user:

The following setup seems to work for me now (four days including a PC

restart).

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware was set to update and quick scan on *8:00 AM*

The longest scan finished around *8:21 AM* with Time elapsed: 16.5 min (but

can be as short as 4 min.)

WakeupOnStandBy (WOSB) was installed and set to wake up on *7:55:00 AM* in

wosb_run0.bat which has the following two lines in it and and in Startup:

@echo off start E:\DOWNLO~1\WAKEUP~1\wosb.exe /run /systray tm="7:55:00 AM" /screenon weekdays=127

[TeMerc]

Question: Does the computer hibernate when not in use? It's possible that the computer is in hibernation mode when the scan tries to run, and that would prevent it from running.

Reply:

According to the Feb 24-25 postings from excile360, hibernation was disabled

via his instructions, i.e., only sleep was in effect. Since I did not know

how to run malwarebytes uisng command lines under scheduled tasks, I was

trying to use WakeupOnStandBy to wake the PC. But initially I did not DIG

deep enough, so the WakeupOnStandBy's wake up did not last after four days.

The whole long series of this communication was prompted by not waking up

from hibernation/sleep as the title suggestes.