Instructions

Please also have a look at pycron. It's a more recent development with more features.

Cron scans the file CRONTAB every minute and checks every line if the specified time/date information matches the current time/date. If they are equal, the command line specified will be executed. A log file (cron.log) with the executed commands is written to the current directory.

Download

There are two versions of Cron:

Version:	Download link:
Cron for Windows 9x/NT	http://www.kalab.com/freeware/cron/cron.zip (22kb)
Cron NT service	http://www.kalab.com/freeware/cron/crons.zip (53kb)

Setup for first version (Windows 9x/NT)

1. copy the files cron.exe and crontab to a folder of your choice
2. edit the file crontab (see the examples as a reference)
3. create a link to cron.exe and move it to the startup folder

Setup for NT service

1. create a crontab file in your SYSTEM32 folder
2. execute the included ntsetup.exe
3. call "crons.exe /?" in a command line to see the available options of crons

The Crontab file

Each line of CRONTAB has the following structure:

<Minute> <Hour> <Day> <Month> <Day of Week> <Command line>

Position:	Values:
Minute	0-59
Hour	0-23
Day	1-31
Month	1-12
Day of week	0-6 (0=Sunday, 1=Monday, ..., 6=Saturday)

Instead of minute, hour, day, month or day of week it's also possible to specify a *. A * represents all possible values for that position (e.g. a * on 2nd position is the same as specifying all the possible values for hour)

It's also possible to specify several values separated by commas: e.g. if you want a command to be executed every 10th minute so you can specify 0,10,20,30,40,50 for minute. A range of values can be specified with a -: e.g. value 0-12 for hour -> every hour a.m.

Comments

Every line not starting with a number is treated as a comment.

Examples

execute a command every minute

  # This is a comment.
  * * * * * c:\tools\CheckForNewFiles.exe

execute the program backup.bat every hour

  # This is a comment.
  0 * * * * c:\tests\backup.bat

do a backup every day at 0.30 p.m.

  # This is a comment.
  30 12 * * * c:\tests\backup.bat

start a backup every tuesday at midnight

  # This is a comment.
  0 0 * * 3 c:\tests\backup.bat

scan drive c for viruses on the 1st of every month at 2.45 p.m.

  # scan for known viruses
  45 14 1 * * c:\path_to_scanner\scan c:

copy some files every half hour

  # This is a comment.
  0,30 * * * * xcopy c:\docs\*.* y:\users /s

copy a file every hour (a.m.) only on weekdays

# System commands need the command interpreter specified:
0 0-12 * * 1-5 c:\...\cmd.exe /c "copy c:\... e:\"