Scheduled Tasks password

[Tripredacus]

We have encountered a problem with Scheduled Tasks that I cannot find a true fix for. We start with Windows XP that is custom setup, and has 1 or more scheduled tasks in it. They are set to use COMPUTERNAME\ACCOUNT and created by that same account. The account's password is typed in, and testing shows that the tasks complete properly.

The we image the machine. Then we drop the image onto another machine. In what seems to be more than half the time, the password is "lost" for these tasks and we have to re-type it in the Set Password box on the Task Properties. This became such a problem (since you cannot see if the password is in there or not) that we added it to our Quality Phase, typing in those passwords, on every system just in case.

The real issue is that we did not catch this issue right away, and there are at least 1500 computers already delivered into the field that may or may not have that password in there. I have already been contacted in at least one instance of the scheduled tasks failing because of this. We are able to do a work-around fix for now which will allow us to fix those particular computers, but this is a problem that we would rather didn't occur in the first place.

Is this caused by a Windows behaviour that we cannot change? We have encountered other Windows behaviours (such as permissions lost on drives after formatting) that we have had to use work arounds for.

Any suggestions?

[cluberti]

This is a known issue with no "fix". What happens is the Task Scheduler stores and encrypts user credentials via an encryption key that is generated from a hash of things specific to that installation, including the user's current SID. After you image the box and restore the image, that original key no longer matches the new hash generated for the user, because of the changes made during the imaging process. When this happens, all prior creds on the box no longer match, and usually do not work (I've seen it work before, but it's rare - your scenario is much more common). The fix is to not image a box with Scheduled Tasks, unfortunately.