Comments on: Why my scheduled task completes with return code 2

By: James Young

James Young — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 18:15:56 +0000

In reply to Jeff Doncaster. Jeff, THANK YOU so much for your contribution to this blog. I have been struggling with what the heck was going on with my scheduled task calling a batch file. It would run manually, but wouldn't run as a scheduled task. It was because of EXACTLY what you said. It's having an issue with the mapped drive I was referring to. You my friend are a lifesaver!!!!

By: Kent Chen

Kent Chen — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 17:52:16 +0000

In reply to James. Maybe delay the task a bit longer?

By: James

James — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 16:27:21 +0000

In reply to Grant. I did all these--- Run it with highest privileges, using UNC, delay the start. Still get the same problem. I can run my bat file manually outside the task scheduler successfully. Inside the task scheduler, I get message saying the task scheduler successfully finished the task with return code 2, and there is no report.

By: Grant

Grant — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 16:30:40 +0000

I was running into the exact same issue. I resolved it by delaying the running of the batch to mount the drive by 1 minute after startup. The issue I was having is the error code of 2 which meant not able to find the path. So by delaying it, the drive was then available.

By: Jeff Doncaster

Jeff Doncaster — Thu, 08 May 2014 19:43:23 +0000

In my case, it was the batch file instructions.. even though the batch file ran perfectly when launched manually, a code 2 appeared when run by the task scheduler. At first I followed advice about permissions on the batch file and any source/destinations within, then ran as user logged in instead of not, the optional ‘start’ directory is not optional.. but I had it set right.. nothing worked.. UNTIL I had the batch file create its own log and discovered it did not like the references to mapped drives in its instructions. Even though the batch file runs fine manually.. I had to replace references to mapped locations with full UNC paths before they would execute properly when run by the task scheduler.

By: trevdev

trevdev — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 18:59:00 +0000

In reply to Thomas Thomassen. I also had this problem because I was piping the output to other files, in the scheduled task arguments. It didnt like that. So I put it all in a batch file and scheduled the batch file.

By: Thomas Thomassen

Thomas Thomassen — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:47:00 +0000

I had an issue when I need to use net use to mount a drive with the SYSTEM account so it would be availible to CrashPlan. Under Win7 (admin no UAC) it was no problem, under Vista (admin with UAC) I got return code 2. I had to uncheck the “Run with highest priveledges” checkbox before it would work.

…go figure…