Download Schedulers for Late Night Free Zone

[BlueMoods]

Gee, check for updates at a specific time daily, that covers it.

[Country Girl]

I don't see the point in any of them. Individual program update settings, Windows Updates setting and, the task scheduler that is included with any version of Windows does the same thing - why would I want more software, risk more viruses and all? Makes no sense when what I or anyone on Windows has already works just fine.

If all I want to do is schedule the download of a large file from the internet during the LNFZ, I think that the Windows task scheduler is ill-suited for this purpose. In fact, I don't know how it can be done with the Windows XP task scheduler. Does anyone out there actually use this to download files?

[MarkPetereit]

If you have a link to the file, you can certainly enter it in Scheduler at a particular time. When scheduler kicks it off it should download the file at that time to your standard download folder.

[BlueMoods]

I use it to get my podcast, just set the task to start iTunes, same for my game updates, task opens the launcher, RoboForms does the log in, it updates.

[Country Girl]

I have looked at the XP Task Scheduler and can't figure out where to enter the URL for the file that I want to download. All it asks for is a path to the program you want to launch. If I put a URL there, the task doesn't run. From everything I can find, the XP Task Scheduler only runs programs, scripts, and batch files.

I have done several internet searches to find out how to download files from the internet with the XP Task Scheduler and have found nothing. I suspect that it can't be done with XP Task Scheduler unless you are a programmer which I'm not. Perhaps later versions of Windows have Task Schedulers with more features.

For me, it's easier to use a separate download manager utility.

[MarkPetereit]

I have looked at the XP Task Scheduler and can't figure out where to enter the URL for the file that I want to download. All it asks for is a path to the program you want to launch. If I put a URL there, the task doesn't run. From everything I can find, the XP Task Scheduler only runs programs, scripts, and batch files.

I have done several internet searches to find out how to download files from the internet with the XP Task Scheduler and have found nothing. I suspect that it can't be done with XP Task Scheduler unless you are a programmer which I'm not. Perhaps later versions of Windows have Task Schedulers with more features.

For me, it's easier to use a separate download manager utility.

You can use the following, replacing 'http://www.domain.com/file.mp3' with the URL to the file you want and 'c:\temp\file.mp3' with the location where you want to save it.

powershell.Exe -command "& {$client = new-object System.Net.WebClient;$client.DownloadFile('http://www.domain.com/file.mp3','c:\temp\file.mp3')}"

FWIW, I found that in the first page Google listed when I searched for "schedule a file download in Windows Scheduler"

And yes, it does work with Windows XP.

[Country Girl]

Like 99.9% of computer users, I had never even heard of PowerShell until you mentioned it. So when I googled it, I got the following description:

Windows PowerShell® is a task-based command-line shell and scripting language designed especially for system administration.

A little too arcane, but probably appeals to DOS techies. Using this method means that you are using two windows applications (Scheduled Tasks and Powershell) to do the job that one 3rd party download manager does.

As an average computer user, I think I'll stick with a modern GUI application for file-downloading and scheduling.

[MarkPetereit]

A little too arcane, but probably appeals to DOS techies. Using this method means that you are using two windows applications (Scheduled Tasks and Powershell) to do the job that one 3rd party download manager does.

As an average computer user, I think I'll stick with a modern GUI application for file-downloading and scheduling.

Well, I'm a Mac, so I couldn't agree with you more. Just helping out a friend in Missouri who's still using Windows and is a new Exede customer.

Everything's much easier on my Mac. It automagically wakes up at midnight every night, downloads any files i added to my overnight queue during the day, downloads the most recent episodes of all my favorite TV shows, updates OSX, updates all my iPad apps, downloads all new podcasts, syncs everything to my iPad then goes back to sleep when it's done or at at 5:00 am, whichever comes first.