Problems with cronimage.gif on custom page

[Antivirus]

I've created a custom page, which as one would expect, contains the footer template at the bottom. Now the footer template has not been modified, therefore one would expect that scheduled tasks should run when the footer is loaded (because cronimage.gif is included within the footer).

This is not the case, it seems when my custom page is loaded, scheduled tasks are not run.

Is there something that I am missing which needs to be called other than simply evaluating the footer template to ensure that cronimage.gif calls cron.php?

One issue that could be is that the custom page is located in root directory, and forums are located in /forum directory.

Any ideas???