okay so ? all simple till now ;)
here’s what i found:
1 - the task was set to run under a specific user.
2 - that user was given “Log on as a batch job” security assignment on that server.
3 - the bat was failing to start in task scheduler.
4 - there were other jobs , running VBS and running okay !
now .. i’ve scratched my head a bit a found this great article about how to toubleshoot:
http://www.shijaz.com/windows/taskscheduler.htm a great article , check it out ! the site also has some great stuff for ISA Server & Exchange if you into it..
in section 2.b it referenced my Part 1 solution, the bat file had a reference to a MAPPED drive ! running non-interactive = no mapped drives.
Part 2 solution
going back to point 4 , i’ve figured its a security issue , although the user had the “log on as batch job” right .. CMD.EXE was manually edited with security permissions, BUILTINBATCH group was missing the read/execute security permission on it.
There .. now it works :)