"Unable to establish existence of the account specified" error when you schedule a task from Windows 7 or from Windows Server 2008 R2 on a pre-Windows Vista-based computer

Consider the following scenario:

• An administrator runs a script to create scheduled tasks that are intended to run under the Local System account on multiple computers.�
• This script runs�correctly, and then the tasks are created on all the target computers.

In this scenario, the tasks�do not run on�the target computers that are running pre-Windows Vista versions of Windows. Additionally, the scheduled task log�(SchedLgu.txt)�displays the following error:

To view the scheduled task log, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, and then click Control Panel.
2. Open�Scheduled Tasks.
3. Click Advanced, and then click View Log.

Note�Follow�these steps in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows XP.

This problem occurs because of a compatibility issue between the source and target operating systems. Specifically, this problem occurs when you schedule tasks by running the schtasks.exe command at a command prompt�under the�Local System account.

The user interface (UI) for the task scheduler lets you select the operating system for which to schedule the task. This option is provided in the Configure For�setting when you create a task.

The following sample command creates a task that has the name "task_test" on a remote computer that has the computer name "Contoso." This command schedules the task to start the Calc.exe process every one minute and�to start�the process under the Local System account:

This command runs without any errors in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. However, this command does not run on�pre-Windows Vista operating systems.

To resolve this problem, add the�/V1�switch to the command. By doing this, you create a task that is visible to pre-Windows Vista versions of Windows.

For example, run the following command:

When you run schtasks.exe�at a command prompt,�you are not presented with all the available options.�(This differs from the behavior of the Task Scheduler UI.) To see the parameters that are available for the�schtasks.exe command, run the following command at a command prompt: