As far as I can see, there isn't any significant benefit of running it under System for Windows 8. The only difference I can see is that it requires you to enter password when you register the task to run it under your own login; nice to avoid but hardly crucial. Probably true for Vista and Windows 7 as well.

But I can see the academic challenge of trying to get it running as you think it ought to. Congratulations on your perseverance.

The problem is that users that don't enter a password will see the console window open every minute, hence the vbs script to hide it.

What I've done this morning is compile the vbs script into an exe file, a user on kitz is going to test it for me, if you would like to test it let me.

I'm very happy to test out anything if it will be helpful for you.

In reply to a post by StephenTodd:

I'm very happy to test out anything if it will be helpful for you.

Thanks, I've sent you a PM.

Thanks, I've tested that and can confirm it works for me on Windows 8.
It runs silently when run directly from Windows Explorer, or when run from a modified Task Scheduler task.

However, for Windows 8 Task Scheduler, I'm not sure of what the advantage of running your new code is over running 'HG612_stats.exe' directly (making sure Task Scheduler runs it in the appropriate directory). HG612_stats.exe also runs silently when launched from Task Scheduler in Windows 8; though it is non-silent when launched from Windows Explorer.

~~~
Just confirming: this is almost orthogonal to the issue of trying to get it registered with Task Scheduler to run under System; except that if it runs under System it will certainly be silent.
I wasn't expecting a different test final executable, but rather a test for getting it registered under System/

Thanks for confirming that works.

Try running the HG612 stats.exe from a scheduled task without entering you're password, does it still run silently?

Can you even have a user account on W8 without a password?

I tried for about 4 hours last night to find a way to create a scheduled task using the system account with schtasks, but I always got access denied errors, unless I ran it with elevated permissions, but that creates further complications . Strangely I could create the task manually in task scheduler without problems though. No end of googling helped either, in fact a lot of forums advised against using the system account.

If I run HG612_stats.exe with setting 'Run only when the user is logged on', it flicks on the screen.
If I run it 'Run whether the user is logged on or not', 'Do not store password' it runs silently.

Can you even have a user account on W8 without a password?
I'm not sure. It isn't that the account doesn't have a password.
Rather, I am using the option in Task Scheduler that says 'Do not store password'

@Stephen, have you been running the stats program for any length of time with the new exe and scheduled task?

The user on Kitz said the task stops running after a while with no apparent problem or reason.

Hi, yes it's been running fine for me for a couple of days; through both sleeps and restarts which can have bad effects on wrongly set up tasks.

However, I have rather hacked the original setup as part of experiments.
For me it now has:

two triggers: [1] at startup and every minute; [2] at task create/modify and then every minute.
one action: D:\Temp\HG612_Modem_Stats\Scripts\HG612_stats.exe in directory D:\Temp\HG612_Modem_Stats\Scripts

I've still got it in a temp directory even though its my production one now.

I do find TaskScheduler has a pretty irritating interface; with silly details such as fixed panel size and the History view always opening with inappropriate column widths.