Rebooting machines that haven't been restarted for a long time

[retto]

Does anyone know of a way to automatically restart Windows XP machines that have not been rebooted in a long time? I work with a large network of machines that are used 24/7, but some machines never get rebooted. I am thinking that running a script that is triggered by CPU time in the task manager might be a place to start, but I am really not sure how to tackle the problem. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[vacunita]

If the machines are on a domain, you could set a group policy.

Alternatively a VB script that checks the time of last reboot and then reboots if its more than a specified amount.
Last Reboot:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1211059&page=1

Send Reboot command:

http://windowsitpro.com/article/art...-script-to-reboot-or-shut-down-my-server.html

You can have it run say every day as a scheduled job.




----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[goombawaho]

Look up Wizmo and particularly the Reboot option.

Worked great for me on my old NT 4.0 servers - never a problem.

 

[goombawaho]

I should have added - download to c:\windows\system32 and create a scheduled task to do a "Wizmo.exe Reboot" at the time you need it.

 

[retto]

What about using uptime.exe with a scheduled task?

 

[goombawaho]

Wizmo, wizmo, wizmo. Rah rah rah. I guess there are lots of ways to do it, but I verified this way in my server environment over a period of 2 years and no problems.

 

[JockMullin]

XP does include shutdown.exe. Create a batch file containing:

shutdown -r -f -t 30

and set it up as a scheduled task to force a restart after a 30 second warning to any user logged into the system.

Jock

 

[retto]

We came up with a solution to the problem, and I thought I'd share it. In scheduled tasks we set the following batch file to run when the computer starts:

====================

Ping 127.0.0.1 /w 1000 /n 1209000
shutdown /r /f /t 600

====================

What happens is that the machine pings it's own loopback adapter for approximately 2 weeks, and then reboots the system (after a 30 second warning.) Since the counter is reset at every bootup, it satifies our needs without installing software. Thanks everyone for your suggestions, it definitely helped me research some options.