something like cron on Windows?

[Doug]

I have Windows XP professional. Is there ANYTHING reliable on Windows
that is like cron on UNIX that will allow you run something at regular
intervals, for example, like every 10 minutes?

I would like to change a (static/.html) web page every 10 minutes using
PHP, is there a way to do this? I have an Apache/PHP/MySql also, so
maybe theres a way to do it through these programs. Has any one done
this before? How?

AT will not do what I want, and SCHTASKS has a lot of bugs, and will not
allow me to run a program in the background.

-d

[AJ]

Re: something like cron on Windows?


"Doug" <dougd99@earthl ink.net> wrote in message
news:sO6Nc.1459 9$f4.7471@newsr ead3.news.atl.e arthlink.net...[color=blue]
>
>
> I have Windows XP professional. Is there ANYTHING reliable on Windows
> that is like cron on UNIX that will allow you run something at regular
> intervals, for example, like every 10 minutes?
>
> I would like to change a (static/.html) web page every 10 minutes using
> PHP, is there a way to do this? I have an Apache/PHP/MySql also, so
> maybe theres a way to do it through these programs. Has any one done
> this before? How?[/color]

I'm assuming this is for a web site? The only 'frig' I've ever used when I
haven't had access to something like cron is to use some code on a page that
checks for the time and then runs some code if it's appropriate.

The only 'gotcha' is that you have to be running a site that has enough
visitors to do this.

Have you seen this? I just found it by doing a seach on Google for con
windows:

http://www.kalab.com/freeware/cron/cron.htm

Hope this helps

Andy

[Valery Kondakoff]

Re: something like cron on Windows?

Doug <dougd99@earthl ink.net> wrote in message news:<sO6Nc.145 99$f4.7471@news read3.news.atl. earthlink.net>. ..[color=blue]
> I have Windows XP professional. Is there ANYTHING reliable on Windows
> that is like cron on UNIX that will allow you run something at regular
> intervals, for example, like every 10 minutes?[/color]

Take a look at nnCron LITE ( http://www.nncron.ru ):

-----
nnCron LITE is a small, but full-featured scheduler that can start
applications and open documents at a specified time or with specified
frequency. nnCron LITE is a perfect freeware Windows clone of a
well-known UNIX scheduler Cron (including all the useful Anacron
features).

Here are the most important features of nnCron LITE:
it can be started as a system service or as a regular standalone
application
it understands cron table format (Unix) and is managed with
easy-to-edit text crontab files that are fully compatible with Unix
crontabs
it can handle and restart so called missed tasks
it can set and use environment variables
it can run applications authorized as currently logged user
(WinNT/2000/XP)
it can be extended with plugins written in Forth language
it can be easy tuned up to answer your current needs
it is not resource demanding, and it can run even on very older PCs
without any noticeable performance degradation. (We have never seen
nnCron LITE service to allocate more than 150k of operative memory.)

nnCron LITE is FREE!
-----

HTH!

[Frank R. Suchy]

Re: something like cron on Windows?

Am Mon, 26 Jul 2004 12:29:12 GMT schrieb Doug:
[color=blue]
> I have Windows XP professional. Is there ANYTHING reliable on Windows
> that is like cron on UNIX that will allow you run something at regular
> intervals, for example, like every 10 minutes?
>
> I would like to change a (static/.html) web page every 10 minutes using
> PHP, is there a way to do this? I have an Apache/PHP/MySql also, so
> maybe theres a way to do it through these programs. Has any one done
> this before? How?[/color]

Valery's suggestion (nnCRON) looks interesting.

But in case his solution doesn't do your job, what about this workaround:

Have a browser running on the same (or any other) system and let your
php-script output some page to the browser which has a meta-refresh tag of
10 minutes. So the browser reloads the page every 10 minutes and the skript
can do it's main job...

hth,
Frank

[mrdance]

VisualCron

I recommend using the application VisualCron which is free. You can
find it here: http://www.visualcron.com