Disable Automatic Maintenance Windows Server 2016

Question

When using Server 2012 I disabled the (evil) Automatic Maintenance task using the following commands (originally found here):

psexec \\SERVERNAME -s schtasks /change /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\TaskScheduler\Maintenance Configurator" /DISABLE
psexec -s schtasks /change /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\TaskScheduler\Maintenance Configurator" /DISABLE

When I try to run this on Server 2016 those entries do not exist. I know it is somewhere because TiWorker.exe eats up a bunch of CPU doing whatever it does. Does anyone know where this setting is in Server 2016?

Genericname12 · Answer 1 · 2017-07-20T05:46:20.390

Looks like that task isn't included in Server 2016. I verified this on a fresh install. Windows appears to run the maintenance scheduled tasks individually now.

The one that runs tiworker and the one that I'm finding the most intrusive is the SilentCleanup task, which runs disk cleanup whether the disk space is low or not, counter to its description. That one can be found under the DiskCleanup folder. I think I'm going to disable this task across the board since there is no reason a server should be running automatic disk cleanup IMO.

Edit: I found a way to check what all the maintenance tasks are:

$MaintTasks = @()
foreach ($task in (Get-ScheduledTask))
{
if (($task | Export-ScheduledTask) -like “*maintenance*”) {$MaintTasks += $task}
}
$MaintTasks

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 03 '18 at 14:01

On a fresh WS 2016 install:

Get-ScheduledTask | Where-Object -Property Description -Match "maint"

TaskPath                                       TaskName                          State     
--------                                       --------                          -----     
\Microsoft\Windows\ApplicationData\            DsSvcCleanup                      Ready     
\Microsoft\Windows\Diagnosis\                  Scheduled                         Ready     
\Microsoft\Windows\DiskCleanup\                SilentCleanup                     Ready     
\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Defender\           Windows Defender Cache Mainten... Ready

The Diagnosis task seems to be relevant. It's using a custom handler. Have you dug into that yet?

According to Windows scheduler the Diagnosis\Scheduled task has never run. I will check a few others. — Shaun Bowe, Feb 03 '17 at 18:40

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 03 '20 at 14:30

0

This will disable the Disk optimization job (Tested on a Windows Server 2016):

If ((Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName 'ScheduledDefrag').State -eq 'Ready') 
{
    Disable-ScheduledTask -TaskName 'ScheduledDefrag' -TaskPath '\Microsoft\Windows\Defrag'
}

answered Mar 03 '20 at 14:30

Andreas

309
1
5
17

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 21 '17 at 15:42

-1

Use PSEXEC. After downloading PSEXEC, open a Command Prompt with elevated permissions, and type:

psexec \%computername% -s schtasks /change /tn "MicrosoftWindowsTaskSchedulerMaintenance Configurator" /disable

answered Jan 21 '17 at 15:42

wkb

1

There are no backslashes anymore? Is that what you're trying to say? – Michael Hampton Jan 21 '17 at 20:42
I will try this out tomorrow. I have PSEXEC already but the path I noted does not exist on server 2016. – Shaun Bowe Jan 22 '17 at 18:21
2

This doesn't work. The scheduled task name appears to have changed but I cannot find it. – Shaun Bowe Jan 27 '17 at 17:01
This looks exactly like the command the OP already tried, but without obviously necessary backslashes. Am I missing something? – I say Reinstate Monica Jan 31 '17 at 21:52

Disable Automatic Maintenance Windows Server 2016

4 Answers4