How can I monitor Windows scheduled tasks for failures? (NETIQKB72658)

How can I monitor Windows scheduled tasks for failures?

Modify the following registry keys:

All scheduled tasks are automatically logged to a hidden log file, which is located in different locations for different version of Operating Systems.  This article will explain how to locate the file and its name, as well as make changes to the log file to allow for more accurate monitoring.

To locate the file, use the following steps:

1. Open REGEDIT on the server that is to be monitored.
2. Browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SchedulingAgent
   
   The default log size is only 32kb and will roll once the file is filled, therefore you should increase the size of this log depending on the number, and frequency in which the scheduled tasks you want to be alerted on run.
3. Modify the MaxLogSizeKB - The default is 32KB, change this to a decimal value of 1024.   One MB should be sufficient for most cases.
4. Copy the value from the LogPath file in to a notepad document to future reference.

With this information you can not use the General_AsciiLog script to monitor this log for conditions that you wish to be alerted on, such as a task failing.  There are many exit codes that can be logged to this file, some of which can be found in the below linked Microsoft article:

Task Scheduler Error and Success Constants

Generally, to monitor for less specific failures you can monitor for the words Error or Warning.

 

Formerly known as NETIQKB72658

This monitoring solution has been tested on Microsoft Windows XP, 2003, and 2008, however log locations vary this unless all of the monitored servers are the same exact operating system, multiple copies of this job would have to be executed on different operating systems.