I've run into issues where the CTDataLoader service will crash on my task servers. This results in a condition where the console will show tasks never starting/finishing, even though the client has completed the tasks sucessfully. More information on this issue can be found in the KB article TECH43681. Unfortunately this KB doesn't offer much in the way of help, so I've been working to create my own band-aids for the issue.
I had been simply setting the recovery options for the service to restart the service, but in some situations, the service fails to start. I've found that restarting the Altiris Object Host Service first will allow me to restart the CTDataLoader service. Knowing that, I created this simple batch file (attached below) which handles the process for me. I set my recovery options to run the batch file on any failures (as seen in Figure 1). Hope this helps someone else.
Figure 1 - Recovery Options for the CTDataLoader Service using the restart_CTDATALOADER.cmd batch file
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions.
You should aim for RCA and fix rather than bandaid, as interupting the service will orphan task status' - it might not be an issue for you, but consider any Job with multiple tasks - you lose the task when the status is lost from the first job. Some customers will have business critical Tasks.
Do your Windows event logs have any .NET/.ASP errors in them?
Do your crashes coincide with Internet outages (see CRL known Microsoft .NET problem above description at http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH192580 and fix at http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO9585)
Do all your clients get the task? (look at tickle ports not bound on clients, network or firewall issues)
Generally the Taskmanagement.log in verbose mode provides the best information on Task Server related performance - you may wish to review setting it into verbose mode, upping it's size limit (anecdotally it will hit at least 300-400MB if you roll out a job to 2000 clients without standard items included) http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH164344
The IIS logs also can be useful.
The CRL check on the internet is a Microsoft default configuration, speak to your CA administrator about CRL distribution points on high availability servers.
I have the kb in front of me but it basically is because microsoft is checking for a cert. if your in a firewalled off envrioment your site servers will not do this and your ct dataloader will not load. it will show as automatic. It will still not start using the OP;s script in some cases unless the crl lookup has been turned off
Also remember to make sure also remember to the steps for the Disable CRL lookups
Additional Step
Disabling CRL lookups
To disable CRL lookups on the Symantec Management Platform computer, you need to edit the machine.config file on the computer, as follows: