After watching Americans are NOT stupid (very funny, but all you have to do is read a few of the comments to be reminded that idiocy knows no geographic boundaries), it was refreshing to be reminded that there are also very, very smart people in the world: Blaise Aguera y Arcas shows off Photosynth. Wow.

What my readers lack in numbers, they make up for in brains, good looks, and formidable Googling skills. I asked for a utility that would allow me to specify tasks (like defragging or backups) to happen upon shutting down Windows. An added wrinkle was that I wanted to be able to schedule those tasks, as I don't want to do a full backup/defrag every night, for example. Readers "miffed" and "dgeiser13" came up with some good ones, with dgeiser13's suggestion of Xecutor fitting my needs perfectly:

• It intercepts the normal Windows shutdown, so I don't have to do anything differently.
• I can schedule different things to happen depending on the day of the week.
• Due to the nature of the tool, I don't have to worry about these processes running while I'm working. No slow-downs, and no worries about files being locked for use during backups.
• Further reducing the risk of locks or conflicts, it appears to close many services before proceeding with its assigned task.
• Free for non-commercial use.

Fantastic! Thank you!

Perhaps there's a way to do this, but...

I want to do backups and drive defragmentation automatically, and according to a schedule. I could sort of set it up with the Windows Task Scheduler, but the problem with that is that it'll either fire up when I'm in the middle of working, bogging down my machine (and it's best not to have stuff open when backing up or defragging), or it'll fire up when Windows starts, and who wants to wait for backup and defrag to complete before you can do anything on your computer (as if Windows didn't start slowly enough as it is!)?

What I really want is for Windows to recognize Shutdown tasks, much the same way it recognizes Startup tasks. And I want to be able to schedule them. So when Windows recognizes a shutdown task (or tasks) for a given day it completely closes all other applications and non-OS-essential processes, runs the shutdown tasks, and then finishes shutting down when they're done. So when I'm done for the day, I shutdown as usual and walk away from my machine. All that long-running crap happens, and THEN Windows shuts down.

Someone must have solved this problem by now, right? I did find WrapUp, which almost fits the bill, except it doesn't do schedules, and it ain't free (not that I begrudge them that). Thoughts?

UPDATE: Solved!