What is a scheduled task on my Windows 8 computer?

A scheduled task on Windows 8 is a program that has been scheduled to run repeatedly on a given schedule.

When you install new software applications, many of them will be automatically setup scheduled tasks to run some background processes without inform you.

For example, when you install Adobe Acrobat Reader to view PDF files, it will automatically setup a schedule task called "Adobe Acrobat Update Task" to periodically connect to Adobe Web server to see if there is updates.

Having scheduled tasks running periodically do help to maintain your computer system or software applications up-to-date automatically. But scheduled tasks also may impact your computer security and performance:

• A scheduled task could run too frequently and wasting your computer CPU and memory resources.
• A scheduled task could interrupt your work unexpectly. For example, while you are doing an important presentation with your computer, a scheduled task starts to run and displays a popup box telling there is update available and asking you to confirm to download it.
• Malware (Virus, Worms, Adware, Spyware) could be hiding on your computer as scheduled tasks fetching your private data.

⇒View and Disable Scheduled Tasks on Windows 8

⇒⇒Windows 8 Scheduled Tasks