How can I open a URL on a schedule in the default browser?

I'm looking for a mechanism to open a single URL in the user's current default browser on a schedule/recurring basis.

I know that if I was writing .Net code to do this, I could simply do something along the lines of Process.Start("http://example.com/somePage.html") which will cause the default browser to open to that address. Likewise, I can go to Start -> Run and type in a given address and that too will cause the default browser to open to that address. Using this knowledge, I thought I would create a Windows Scheduled Task where the "Start a program" field was set to the URL I wanted to start. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. When the task runs, the URL is not opened (nor are any browsers).

Can anyone point me in the right direction to make this happen? Ideally, I would like to stay away from 3rd-party utilities, leveraging Windows' Task Scheduler would be great. Also, just to be clear, I'm not looking for a browser plugin to accomplish this.

Also, I'm not looking for anything fancy wrt waking a sleeping computer to carry this task out. I'm fine with just letting this happen only when a user is logged in.

I would create a batch file containing:

start http://example.com/somePage.html

And point Task Scheduler to that batch file. You can also test that it will work by running the batch file manually.

I've recently found myself trying to solve this exact issue and I have found a few things that can hopefully be of help.

Set up the scheduled task to run the following command:

explorer "http://example.com/somePage.html"

This does the trick without creating an extra file and without a flickering window. I have confirmed that this works on Windows 7 and opens the URL using the default browser.

The same trick however does NOT work in Windows XP. The same command in Windows XP will always use Internet Explorer to open the given URL. The best solution I have found for WIndows XP to date is to set up a scheduled task with

cmd /c start http://example.com/somePage.html

Again, no extra file required, but you do get a brief appearance of a command window.

I have not tested this on Windows Vista or Windows 8

You could make the Windows task manager run a program, and have it point to an HTML file that contains a redirection to the website you want it to open.

1. Open Notepad.
2. Write Javascript redirect.
3. Save as HTML.
4. Set task manager to open that HTML file on your desired schedule.

Here is the Javascript. Let me know if it works.

<script type="text/javascript">
window.location = "http://www.google.com/"
</script>