System Maintenance Troubleshooter - Turn On or Off
System Maintenance Troubleshooter - Turn On or Off
How to Turn the "System Maintenance Troubleshooter" On or Off in Windows 7
Published by Brink
Designer Media Ltd
How to Turn the "System Maintenance Troubleshooter" On or Off in Windows 7
Information
The System Maintenance Troubleshooter automatically performs common maintenance tasks below weekly in Windows 7. It either fixes any found problems automatically, or reports the problems through Action Center.
What it fixes:
Broken shortcuts - Broken shortcuts are invalid references to programs and other resources. For example, a desktop shortcut for a USB device may be regarded as broken if the USB device is not connected when the System Maintenance troubleshooter performs its maintenance. When there are more than 4 broken shortcuts on the desktop, then all broken shortcuts on the desktop are removed.
Troubleshooting history is taking up disk space - Frees up disk space by removing troubleshooting history logs older than 1 month.
System time is incorrectly set - Sets the correct system time and synchronize system clock with the time server. When the system time is set incorrectly, features that rely on time measurement such as Product Activation, malware scanners, browser certificates, etc... might not work correctly.
Unused desktop icons - Icons and shortcuts on the desktop that have been unused in 3 months are removed.
Disk volume errors - Frees up disk space by repairing hard disk volume errors such as bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files and directory errors. These problems can cause the file system to report incorrect volume details and occupy excessive disk space.
Error reports are taking up disk space - Frees up disk space by removing error reports and logs older than 1 month.
This tutorial will show you how to change the troubleshooting settings for Computer Maintenance to turn the System Maintenance Troubleshooter on or off.
If turned off, System Maintenance Troubleshooter will no longer automatically perform the tasks above. You will still be able to manually run System Maintenance Troubleshooterthough.
Note
A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft below. After you install this hotfix, you can disable the "Broken Shortcut" task or the "Unused Desktop Icon" task in the System Maintenance troubleshooter.
You must be logged in as an administrator to be able to do this tutorial.
EXAMPLE: System Maintenance Troubleshooter
Here's How:
1. Open the troubleshooting Change Settings(click on link) window.
2. To Turn On System Maintenance Troubleshooter NOTE:This is the default setting.
A) Under Computer Maintenance, select (dot) On (Recommended), and click on OK.
B) Go to step 4.
3. To Turn Off System Maintenance Troubleshooter
A) Under Computer Maintenance, select (dot) Off, and click on OK. NOTE:You may need to refresh the desktop after step 4 to hopefully restore any shortcuts that were hidden/removed by the System Maintenance Troubleshooter.
4. If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes.
5. When finished, close the Troubleshooting window.
Any idea why these shortcuts are considered broken?
GPO workaround:
gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
System
Troubleshooting and Diagnostics
Scheduled Maintenance
edit:
Double click on the policy named Configure Scheduled Maintenance Behavior
Set that policy to Enabled
Change the Execution Level to Troubleshoot Only.
Okay your way out of gpedit.
That is it
In the GPO workaround video, this setting is shown around the 11 second mark. Then I cause the scheduled task to run. No shortcuts are deleted
The next part of the video just turns the GPO workaround off and runs the scheduled task again to show that the shortcuts do go away if the GPO workaround is not present. Sorry if the video is confusing.
edit2:
For reasons that I don't understand, some computers may require a reboot to get the GPO workaround to take hold. (You might also try using the gpudate command.) But, as you can see in the GPO workaround video, the results were immediate for me and my testing. The testing was done inside a virtual machine that was not a member of a domain. Perhaps that has something to do with the restart issue.
edit3:
Those with W7 starter, home basic or home premium are just out of luck. The GPO work around does not work. You can manually add/change the same registry the same way that gpedit does, but those OS versions will ignore these particular policy related registry settings. Also, it does no good to add gpedit to these OS versions - since that only aids in changing the registry. Gpedit does nothing to change the way those OS versions ignore these particular policy related registry settings.
Last edited by UsernameIssues; 02 Feb 2014 at 23:49.
Those types of shortcuts did not get deleted... but unfortunately, the shortcuts in the videos where just a simple illustration. At my office, the shortcuts being deleted by that scheduled task all point to a file server. The links are not broken nor old and this "fix" does not fix it.
I'll probably just use the GPO workaround, but I find it odd that this annoyance has not been patched in an OS this old. From the number of forum/blogs/articles posted about it, I would say that lots of hours have been spent on this issue.
I'm giving this method a try - already set it up. What triggers the action of keeping the shortcuts on the Desktop?
UsernameIssues said:
Any idea why these shortcuts are considered broken?
GPO workaround:
gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
System
Troubleshooting and Diagnostics
Scheduled Maintenance
edit:
Double click on the policy named Configure Scheduled Maintenance Behavior
Set that policy to Enabled
Change the Execution Level to Troubleshoot Only.
Okay your way out of gpedit.
That is it
In the GPO workaround video, this setting is shown around the 11 second mark. Then I cause the scheduled task to run. No shortcuts are deleted
The next part of the video just turns the GPO workaround off and runs the scheduled task again to show that the shortcuts do go away if the GPO workaround is not present. Sorry if the video is confusing.
edit2:
For reasons that I don't understand, some computers may require a reboot to get the GPO workaround to take hold. (You might also try using the gpudate command.) But, as you can see in the GPO workaround video, the results were immediate for me and my testing. The testing was done inside a virtual machine that was not a member of a domain. Perhaps that has something to do with the restart issue.
edit3:
Those with W7 starter, home basic or home premium are just out of luck. The GPO work around does not work. You can manually add/change the same registry the same way that gpedit does, but those OS versions will ignore these particular policy related registry settings. Also, it does no good to add gpedit to these OS versions - since that only aids in changing the registry. Gpedit does nothing to change the way those OS versions ignore these particular policy related registry settings.
This tutorial tells us how to turn a maintenance task on or off. It is on by default.
Nisko said:
I...What triggers the action of keeping the shortcuts on the Desktop?
The GPO settings shown in my post lets you keep the maintenance task on, but it tells the maintenance script to only troubleshoot/log what it finds (i.e. don't try to fix things).
Part of a maintenance script that comes with Windows 7 determines which desktop shortcuts are broken. That script gets it wrong 100% of the time for certain working desktop shortcuts. The author of the script decided that the fix for a "broken" desktop shortcut was to delete that shortcut. According to the info in this tutorial, desktop shortcuts that have not been used in 3 months are also deleted.
I feel stupid because I've been using computers for 30 - 40 years and never heard about this GPO. Is there a tutorial I can read that tells me about it? My Desktop is almost full of shortcuts so, if I understand correctly, I will lose many of my shortcuts by leaving the settings I am trying ON. Is that true? Are there other choices for not losing the four or five shortcuts that I constantly lose? For now, I'm using the GPO workaround - again, which I don't understand. Please help me because I like to understand what I'm doing and the possible consequences. Thanks.........
> I will lose many of my shortcuts by leaving the settings I am trying ON. Is that true?
I don't think that I've made myself clear. There is a scheduled task that automatically runs the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script once each week. That script has been running on your W7 computer. That script is probably the reason why you lost some shortcuts (as shown in my video).
By default, the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script does two things:
1) finds problems
2) fixes problems
If you have enable the GPO and set it to Troubleshoot Only...
...then the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script only does one thing:
1) finds problems
If you use the GPO settings that I mentioned, then your shortcuts will not be deleted because you have told the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script not to fix things. The consequences of not fixing things can be determined by looking at the list of things that the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script does. Look at the top of this thread. There is an Information box with a section named What it fixes:
Those are the things that will not be automatically "fixed" if you set the GPO setting to Troubleshoot Only.
That said, I find that the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script is wrong a lot of the time. In theory, the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script should fix the system's time if it is not correct. In practice, I don't see the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script detecting an incorrect system time. So, that is one "consequence" that is not really a consequence.
Again, look at the top of this thread. At the bottom of the Information box is a link to steps to manually run the System Maintenance Troubleshooter script. You don't need to create a shortcut to run it, just skip to step two in option two. Copy/paste the info mentioned there into an elevated command prompt window. Once the System Maintenance window opens, click on the Advanced link near the lower left corner. Doing that should reveal an option named "Apply repairs automatically". The only thing that the GPO settings that I mentioned in my post does is to uncheck that option when the System Maintenance is run automatically. You can carefully walk your way thru each System Maintenance window to see what normally (and silently) happens each week.
Thank you so much for the detailed reply. My wife is going into the hospital tomorrow - so I won't have time to review all you've explained. However, I will do that just as soon as I can. Hope you don't mind if I post back if I have some questions.
I'm giving this method a try - already set it up. What triggers the action of keeping the shortcuts on the Desktop?
UsernameIssues said:
Any idea why these shortcuts are considered broken?
GPO workaround:
This method did not work for me................
gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
System
Troubleshooting and Diagnostics
Scheduled Maintenance
edit:
Double click on the policy named Configure Scheduled Maintenance Behavior
Set that policy to Enabled
Change the Execution Level to Troubleshoot Only.
Okay your way out of gpedit.
That is it
In the GPO workaround video, this setting is shown around the 11 second mark. Then I cause the scheduled task to run. No shortcuts are deleted
The next part of the video just turns the GPO workaround off and runs the scheduled task again to show that the shortcuts do go away if the GPO workaround is not present. Sorry if the video is confusing.
edit2:
For reasons that I don't understand, some computers may require a reboot to get the GPO workaround to take hold. (You might also try using the gpudate command.) But, as you can see in the GPO workaround video, the results were immediate for me and my testing. The testing was done inside a virtual machine that was not a member of a domain. Perhaps that has something to do with the restart issue.
edit3:
Those with W7 starter, home basic or home premium are just out of luck. The GPO work around does not work. You can manually add/change the same registry the same way that gpedit does, but those OS versions will ignore these particular policy related registry settings. Also, it does no good to add gpedit to these OS versions - since that only aids in changing the registry. Gpedit does nothing to change the way those OS versions ignore these particular policy related registry settings.
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Source -
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