event id 101 task start failed - task scheduler event id 101 launch failure

Hello again.

This post is related to automating SQL server tasks with Task Scheduler.

In this example I was tasked with exporting SQL server agent jobs twice a month.

To achieve this, I setup a task scheduler task that ran a PowerShell script that:

• establishes a local connection to the SQL server.
• cleans the file before writing to the .sql file to avoid adding on (appending) results on subsequent runs of the task scheduler task.
• when a connection is established, export the SQL agent jobs on the server to a .sql file on a remote server.
• sends a confirmation email via the SQL server database mail profile that the SQL agent jobs were exported to the specified remote server path.

That was a mouthful.

Now that you know my task scheduler task is calling a PowerShell script, let's get back to why it is failing. 

The good news is this error is not related to the script.

The error launch failure means the task could not even run. This is most likely due to a permissions issue.

Here's how you can fix this problem.

I. First I changed the general properties of the task to include 'run with highest privileges':



Then I executed the task and still received the same error when I checked the Details tab of the task:

+

EventData

TaskName

\SQLagentJobsExport_...

UserContext

DOMAIN\sqldatabase_engine_username

ResultCode

2147943785

II. Using process of elimination, I checked the SQL server and see if the user account that is running my task has access to the SQL Server instance.

In SSMS, under Security> Logins, I verified that the user account was in the instance and that it had sysadmin privileges under the server roles.


III. Finally, I decided to see if the user account was an administrator on the local server.

To do this go to computer management > local users and groups > groups > administrators.

My user account was not part of the administrators group for the local server.

I added my user to the administrators group and ran the task scheduler task and success!

The history of the task confirms the task ran successfully:

Task Scheduler successfully finished "{8704385c-c742-4667-a620-7976edee527a}" instance of the "\SQLagentJobsExport_....." task for user "DOMAIN\sqldatabase_engine_username

".

If you have any further questions, please post below.

Thank you and Happy reading,

-marshé hutchinson
#learnSQLwithME