Problem understanding schedule behaviour

[Walter Eagle]

Hi there

I have two schedules set: one for a system scan (monthly, 1st of every month); and one for immunization (weekly, every Wednesday).

If I examine the schedule settings for the system scan it says it was run last time on 01 Dec 2019.
However the Start Center shows the label "Your system has not been scanned in 10 days."
And when I hover my mouse pointer over the taskbar icon it shows "Last system scan 24th November 2019".
(That date was probably a manual scan I ran, not a scheduling error.)

The immunization schedule settings show last run 4th December 2019 (today, a Wednesday).
The rest of the software appears to agree with that and I can't find any evidence of a conflict.

Why would the scan schedule not inform the Start Center etc that it had run?
Or has the schedule been triggered but Spybot not executed the scan?

Thanks and regards

Walter

[Zenobia]

As I recall. I believe that Scheduled Scans do not show in the Spybot Start Center. I believe only manual scans show there. If you'd like to check the system scan, you could open Task Scheduler, open task scheduler library, open the Safer-Networking folder, then open the Spybot - Search and Destroy folder, then click the Scan the System task. Under Actions, I usually Enable All Tasks history temporarily, so I can see what is listed in the History tab. Then over under Selected item, I click Run and see if the System Scan starts and runs okay. Currently, when I do that the Spybot start center opens, but the system scan does not run. However, I've changed things around in scheduled tasks so many times when somebody asks about scheduled tasks, that I can't confirm for certain if that's true to everybody, or just something I did. So you can click Run and see if the system scan starts okay, and see what it says in the History tab. Please let me know how it goes. :)

[Walter Eagle]

Hi there

Thanks for the prompt and full reply. I've attempted what you suggested (with a minor alteration in case anyone else is reading this.)

Your instructions were -
01. Open Task Scheduler
02. Open task scheduler library
03. Open the Safer-Networking folder
04. Then open the Spybot - Search and Destroy folder
05. Then click the Scan the System task.
06. Under Actions, I usually Enable All Tasks history temporarily, so I can see what is listed in the History tab.
07. Then over under Selected item, I click Run and see if the System Scan starts and runs okay.
Currently, when I do that the Spybot start center opens, but the system scan does not run.

My change was at Item 06. The only control I could find anywhere to Enable All Tasks History was in the left-hand pane of Task Scheduler. Right-click on the Spybot - Search and Destroy folder and then you have the Enable All Tasks History option. This changes to Disable All Tasks History once you have selected it.

So, what happened when I then ran the System Scan task manually?
Back in the right-hand pane I right-clicked on 'Scan the system' and selected Run.
Immediately there were 5 items in the History pane -
Task registration updated
Created Task process
Task Started
Action started
Task triggered by user

The last four all had the same date & time. The first one was several seconds before, presumably when I had adjusted the History setting.

Then ... ?
Nothing appeared to happen.
The Start Center did not open, the System Scan window did not open, and there was no evidence of a scanning process in the Windows Task Manager.
After waiting a couple of minutes I opened Start Center manually from the system tray icon. Immunization and Update banners were green and up-to-date. The System Scan banner was yellow and said "Your computer has not been scanned for 11 days".
I then opened System Scan from the system tray icon and waited nearly 48 minutes while it ran a full scan. I closed it manually
The Start Center window then changed the System Scan banner to green and gave the last scan time correctly. I closed it manually.

I then highlighted the Spybot - Search & Destroy folder in the left pane, right-clicked and selelcted "Display All Running Tasks".
This showed a few tasks associated with other software I have installed (Dropbox, SyncBack back-up software etc.)
It also listed "Scan the system" with a "Current action" of Run, and a "Run duration" and "Started" that corresponded with when I'd triggered the schedule manually (when nothing appeared to happen).

I have no idea what is happening. Is the schedule correctly launching the System Scan? It looks not.
If anyone else has a System Scan that does run correctly on a schedule, I'd be interested to compare all the schedule settings and checkboxes to make sure I've not inadvertantly caused a problem myself.

Thanks again

[Zenobia]

Oh, sorry about number 6. I have an Actions pane over to the right, it might not be there by default or there may be some other difference between out task schedulers. :)

Looking at my scheduled task, I think somewhere along the line I changed it to use my account. I believe by default the System Scan task uses the System account. If it does, then if this link is true, it might explain why Spybot is not showing when you start the system scan:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6568736/how-do-i-set-a-windows-scheduled-task-to-run-in-the-background/6568823#6568823
Is your "When running the task, use the following user account:" listed as System under the General tab in the scheduled task?
When I changed my own "When running the task, use the following user account:" to use the System account and ran the Scan the system task, it started Running, and I located Malware Scanner in my task manager running. Rightclicking Malware Scanner properties shows that it is SDScan.exe. So it does appear that it does run in the background, because the Start Center did not visibly open on my desktop when I ran the task.

[Walter Eagle]

Hi again

I made the change to the User Account from my own PC USer Account to the System account. (When I entered "SYSTEM" as the chosen account, Windows 10 immediately renamed and displayed it as "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM").
I ran the scheduled task 'Scan the system' and just as you indicated, a background process named Malware Scanner (properties = SDScan) was now visible in Task Manager.
I let it run until CPU usage had dropped to 0%. (It never actually changed its Status in the Task Manager Details page from 'Running'.)

Now I checked again in the SpyBot > Settings > Schedule tab. This showed the last time run for the Scan schedule as corresponding to the just completed manually-triggered scan.
However although the SpyBot > Start Center showed the Last system scan banner as green, it also said 'Your computer has not been scanned in 1 days' - this would correspond to the previous manual scan I did yesterday.

All of this doesn't really represent a major problem. I can set a separate calendar reminder to myself to run a manual scan at a suitable interval. But I'm still very puzzled why the Start Center display doesn't appear to be informed by the schedule manager of the date and time of a successful automatic scheduled scan.

I may keep tinkering with other settings myself just to see what happens. If I get any breakthrough I'll report back, but please don't waste any more time trying to resolve this remotely. If there's no obvious solution then let's just leave it as it is.

Thanks for you help so far.

Regards

Walter

[Zenobia]

You're welcome. :)

You certainly may leave it as it is, if you wish. But, you could also ask Spybot support why the scheduled scan isn't shown in the Spybot Start Center like the manual scan is, it's up to you. If you decide to ask them about it, you can do so through this page:
https://www.safer-networking.org/support/#contactform