Simple XP tip: Alarm clock
I’ve come to quite like XP. But there’s the odd missing feature, like the fact that Windows has no alarm clock. I don’t mean a super-fancy Outlook Calender application, where you have wade through scads of GUI just to get a reminder sound — I mean a simple beep-beep alarm clock.
Then I discovered that XP (especially XP Pro) has a reasonably rich set of command line utilities. Well, not rich if you’re used to Unix-like shutils or txtutils, but rich if you’re from a Windows 95, “the most powerful command is dir /w” type of background.
So of course I wanted my alarm clock. No doubt old news for Unix-heads, but enter the Microsoft version of the at command. (Or the more powerful schtasks, but I think that’s only in XP Pro.)
To get my alarm clock, I first made a batch file which just plays a sound, and stuck it in my path, say, c:\windows. Here’s my alarm.bat that plays an alarm sound using Media Player (put it all on one line):
"c:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe" /play /close /new c:\windows\Media\notify.wav
And then when you want to set an alarm, just go to the command line (Start > Run > “cmd”) and type something like:
at 7:30pm alarm
Or, if you want an alarm at 6am every Mon, Wed, and Thu:
at 6am /every:m,w,th alarm
Trivial, I know. But what I like is that you don’t have to download yet another 1.5MB program to do it (like this one or this one).
1 October 2007 by Ben 36 comments
36 comments (oldest first)
Thanks very much for the tip. BTW, I found I had to make the .bat extension explicit and use a 24-hour clock:
at 19:30 alarm.bat
Hmmm, doesn’t work for me for some reason… How does typing “alarm” in work? That isn’t really a command, but I’ll experiment.
DarthVader, “alarm” isn’t a built-in command, but if you save out a file alarm.bat somewhere in your PATH, as described above, it should work.
Kay, will try it.
I did what you said, but… When I type AT /YES it says
ERROR 1 TOMMOROW 5:53 PM ALARM
And nothing happens. I’m sorry to bug you, but this looks so cool!
I’m not sure, but there’s probably some issue with your alarm.bat or it’s not in your path. Assuming you’ve already created the alarm.bat file, check what happens when you just type “alarm”.
Hmm, I saved it to my desktop. The status reads OK until the time is what I set it to, and then it goes to ERROR. I hope I’m not a bother to you, but I am totally confused…
OH! I understand, you gotta make alarm.bat a custom command, as they call it. OK! Thanks, I’ll try it.
Hmm, is there any way to make ia alarm on the current day? Like, if you’re testing it out? This will probably be my last comment, I just need to know what you do step ny step, and that would be good, thanks (if that’s too muxh that’s ok just don’t respond).
I think if you give any time in the future, it should work fine. So if it’s 1:45pm here now, and you say “at 2:00pm alarm”, it should alarm in 15 minutes. For further details, you’ll probably have to check out the Windows XP “at command” documentation.
sight Oh well, thanks for your help. You were right, but no matter what I do, the status always ends up as ERROR.
I GOT IT!! Thank you so much for your tolerance and helpfulness!
I like this idea for a very simple alarm run out of command prompts – but I would want a (static) pop-up on my screen instead of an audio sound. I’m unfamiliar with batch files, so I’m not sure where to start. Thoughts?
I love the way you wrote this. I am totally the “Windows 95, the most powerful command is dir /w” type… :)
Gonna try it just for that.. Thank you!! :D
Regards, Nonaz
Hi,
xphome sp3 — my alarm.bat written as you say to, is in the same place you put yours, and wmplayer2.exe in the same place, so the parameters are the same. ‘alarm’ produces no sound but this error:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
`C:\Documents and Settings\bri>/play /close /new c:\windows\Media\notify.wav`
‘/play’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Hi quattrocchi, I’m not sure exactly, but yours looks like it’s trying to execute a program “/play” (because it says “/play is not recognised) when it should be executing wmplayer2.exe, like so:
"c:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe" /play /close /new c:\windows\Media\notify.wav
What about if you want the alarm to go off a month from today?
Chang the link from a wav file to a streaming audio link and you have a radio alarm clock, cool…
Thanks for advise man. I have made the batch file, it works correctly. I can RUN the alarm it works perfectly. Somehow the timer is not working. I typed “at 15:13 alarm” in cmd prompt it said “Added a new job with job ID =9”
And then when the time come, nothing happens.
Any advise?
All right, so I went to scheduled task, I found the problem. It’s because I got to insert the ID password or else it couldn’t execute any task.
So now, dear. Tell me if there is an easy way to include the ID password in the command in cmd prompt? So that I wouldn’t have to go to sheduled task everytime I need an Alarm ***
XP is gay! There is no way to execute this action. I will have to remove the password of my ID just to execute it in the cmd prompt. LoL It’s ok. Dude, great tutorials.
quattrocchi: I hope this reply isn’t too late. Anyway. You could remove “/play /close /new” and it should work. I tried it. It works perfectly without those commands , an example since I use KMPlayer and put my music file on shared folder.
C:\Program Files\The KMPlayer\KMPlayer.exe” C:\Docume~1\AllUSE~1\Docume~1\MyMusi~1\DisneyCircle~\1.mp3
In one line, notepad, saved as BAT file
These instructions didn’t quite work for me. I initially put the batch file in the C:Windows directory, but nothing happened. Also, when I open the cmd window the prompt reads:
C:Documents and SettingsOffice>
So I put the batch file in the D&SOffice directory. Also, I had to specify that the file was a batch file:
at 11:55 alarm.bat
This fixed the issue for me! (In addition, make sure you have MediaPlayer installed (I didn’t) and that you have the notify.wav file in the Media folder or use a different, louder file.) Great suggestions above with the streaming audio!
On my win7 machine the wmp player name is different (wmplayer.exe, not mplayer2.exe)… I had to use this: “c:Program FilesWindows Media Playerwmplayer.exe” /play /close /new c:windowsMedianotify.wav
I use this with utorrent to tell me when a torrent is finished (it lets you specify a command-line to execute when a torrent is done downloading).
As for doing this as a reminder, can’t you do this with XP’s task scheduler (don’t know, myself since I’m on Win7). Regardless, I recommend the freebie version of system scheduler (from splinterware.com) for alarms – their popups windows stay on-top and are super reliable and configurable. No scripting necessary. I’ve tried all the freebie notifier apps and theirs is the best. No, I’m not associated with them
Thanks much. I have created a batch program that works. But I need to sound to be louder. I keep earphones plugged in and I need to be able to hear the file even if the earphones are hanging on the bulletin board next to me. Does mplayer2.exe have a volume parameter?
Re my previous post about mplayer2: I have been searching for documentation or a user manual, and I have come up dry. Is there such a thing?
Again: or is the source code available? I could figure it out from that.
Hi June, it doesn’t look like mplayer2 has a volume parameter (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241422). However, there’s a cool little command line utility called NirCmd that allows you to do it: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html
Download it and try “nircmd.exe setsysvolume 65535” to set the volume to maximum, for example.
It works! Thank you so much. I am a happy camper.
I appear to be having a problem making this work i’m typing at 6:15pm c:testbatchfilesalarm.bat is says it added and what ID, when i type at 1 it shows the following
Task ID: 1 Status: OK Schedule: Tomorrow Time of day: 18:15 Interactive: yes Command: C:tesbatchfilesalarm.bat
so it’s scheduled but nothing happens, if i just type C:tesbatchfilesalarm.bat the file executes fine. Any advice?
just to add that the missing in my last sentance is a typo on here not when i type the command line so it should be C:testbatchfilesalarm.bat
“C:testbatchfilesalarm.bat”
ok so it won’t type by slashes lol
I tried your script and I have an issue on my XP pro It run if I’m cd [to-batch-file] but otherwise it doesn’t recognize the alarm order, even that I put it in my Path and when I’m on the alarm.bat directory (with cmd.exe) it doesn’t respond when I’m scheduling a time. I’m also sorry to bug you bat as mentioned before is too cool to let go!! :-)
lol…all you have to do is go to schedule task in the control panel and set it to play some kind of audio, you could download all sorts of alarm sounds on the web.
nice tip, i threw my last alarm clock out the window on accident.