Scheduled Task that does not exist is waking my PC up on a regular basis

Question

So lately I've been having a super annoying issue with my Windows 10 install, it will wake itself up randomly, often in the middle of the night. When running 'powercfg -lastwake' in a command prompt I'm given the reason.

C:\Users\duopr>powercfg -lastwake
Wake History Count - 1
Wake History [0]
Wake Source Count - 1
Wake Source [0]
Type: Wake Timer
Owner: [SERVICE] \Device\HarddiskVolume4\Windows\System32\svchost.exe (SystemEventsBroker)
Owner Supplied Reason: Windows will execute 'NT TASK\Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Universal Orchestrator Start' scheduled task that requested waking the computer.

But this doesn't help at all, as when I check my scheduled task list, this task does not exist..

C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator>dir /A
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is EC61-2D6A

Directory of C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator

07/04/2019  11:39 PM    <DIR>          .
07/04/2019  11:39 PM    <DIR>          .. 
07/04/2019  10:51 AM             3,356 Backup Scan
07/04/2019  09:15 PM             2,664 Maintenance Install
23/03/2019  05:30 PM             2,616 Reboot
06/04/2019  11:46 PM             2,822 Reboot_AC
06/04/2019  11:46 PM             2,778 Reboot_Battery
07/04/2019  11:44 PM             5,872 Schedule Scan
23/03/2019  05:30 PM             4,354 Schedule Scan Static Task
23/03/2019  05:30 PM             3,056 UpdateModelTask
23/03/2019  05:30 PM             2,510 USO_Broker_Display
23/03/2019  05:30 PM             3,282 USO_UxBroker
          10 File(s)         33,310 bytes
           2 Dir(s)  25,988,657,152 bytes free

I also checked this was the case in the normal Task Scheduler GUI. It isn't there. Has anyone experienced this ghost before? If so, how do I banish it so I can stop waking up to the eye searing white of my lock screen?

Answer 1

It seems that this task is created on-the-fly after Windows Update completed or other event, and deleted after the task has run.

Answer 2

What you have stumbled upon is the "Configure Automatic Updates" policy tasks.

If you look in Task Scheduler, you actually need to traverse the tree to find these tasks, which would be Task Scheduler Library → Microsoft → Windows → UpdateOrchestrator. You should be able to manage them from here.