As you know, Windows has a built-in Automatic Maintenance feature that takes care of important tasks such as security scanning and updating, Windows software updates, Disk Defragmentation, System Diagnostics, Disk Volume Errors, and many more. So if you receive an error message saying, “Windows is unable to run automatic maintenance, The maintenance schedule is unavailable”, then this post will guide you in what you can do to resolve this issue.
Here are some suggestions you can try if the Automatic Maintenance in your Windows 10 PC is not able to run.
Option 1 – Enable Automatic Maintenance
It is possible that Automatic Maintenance has been disabled so you can try enabling Automatic Maintenance on your Windows 10 PC. To do so, follow these steps:
- Go to Control Panel.
- From there, select System and Security > Security and Maintenance > Automatic Maintenance.
- After that, set the time you want to run the Automatic Maintenance and then check the checkbox saying, “Allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time”.
- Click OK to save the changes.
On the other hand, you can also enable Automatic Maintenance via the Registry Editor. But before you proceed, you need to create a System Restore Point first.
- Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box.
- After that, type “Regedit” in the field and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.
- Navigate to the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionScheduleMaintenance
- Next, look for the “MaintenanceDisabled” key and then double click on it to open it and then set its value to “0”.
- Click OK and exit the Registry Editor.
- Restart your computer.
Option 2 – Check the Task Scheduler Services status
Majority of the tasks in Windows 10 run via services. So it is most likely that either the Service has been stopped or is set to the manual which is why Windows is unable to run Automatic Maintenance. Thus, you need to change it to automatic mode.
- Tap the Win + R keys to open Run.
- Type “services.msc” in the field and hit Enter to open Services.
- Next, look for the Task Scheduler service and tap the T key on your keyboard which should take you to the services that start with T.
- Double click on the Task Scheduler service and select the Automatic option under the Startup Type.
- If it is not started yet, click on the Start button.
- Then click Apply and OK to save the changes.
Option 3 – Check the Status in Task Scheduler
You can also try checking the status in the Task Scheduler. Just open the Task Scheduler > Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > TaskScheduler. From there, make sure that Idle Maintenance, Maintenance Configurator, and Regular Maintenance are enabled.
Option 4 – Run the System File Checker
The SFC or System File Checker scan could detect and automatically repair damaged system files that could be causing the Automatic Maintenance issue. SFC is a built-in command utility that helps in restoring corrupted files as well as missing files. It replaces bad and corrupted system files with good system files. To run the SFC command, follow the steps given below.
- Tap Win + R to launch Run.
- Type in cmd in the field and tap Enter.
- After opening Command Prompt, type in sfc /scannow and hit Enter.
The command will start a system scan which will take a few whiles before it finishes. Once it’s done, you could get the following results:
- Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.
- Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.
- Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.
Option 5 – Run the DISM tool
The DISM tool is another command-line tool in the Windows operating system that could help users fix various corrupted system files. To use it, follow these steps:
- Open the Command Prompt as admin.
- Then type in this command: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
- The DISM command you entered will repair the corrupted system image. Do not close the window if the process takes a while as it will probably take a few minutes to finish.
- Restart your PC.