I recently installed BOINC after using SETI@home with few problems for several years. Everything is up and running and seems to be fine, except...it is clear that BOINC is grabbing ALL of my spare CPU capacity ALL of the time. This seems much more agressive than SETI@home which just used to tick along in the background using 3% or something.

My problem is that this PC is used in the living room and running the CPU at 100% all the time triggers the cooling fans and it's remarkably noisy. The relief when I disable BOINC is just wonderful. As well as the noise pollution, I doubt this is doing much for my PC's health.

So, can you let me know how I can stop BOINC doing this and gain some real control over how it uses my PC, please?

If not, I think I'll have to give my PC, my ears and my electricity bill a rest and allow my PC's idle capacity to become idle again.

Cheers,

Les

www.leshowarth.com

BOINC actually runs at a LOWER priority than SETI Classic, but I've heard what you are describing before. If you have a dual-core system, or a P4 with HyperThreading, BOINC will run two results simultaneously; you can "cut that back" by changing your prefs on the SETI site to "use at most 1 CPU".

If you only have one CPU, then short of quitting BOINC, there is a utility called ThreadMaster - you can tell it how much of the CPU you want BOINC to have. It should be available from the SETI "other software" download links page, or you can google it of course.

You might also check that all your fans and heat sinks are clean and free of dust bunnies; overheating can cause the fans on a "smart" motherboard to kick in before they really should.

As long as the temperature is not "too high" for the CPU, running at a constant temperature is probably better for the components than it is to repeatedly heat and cool.

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I recently installed BOINC after using SETI@home with few problems for several years. Everything is up and running and seems to be fine, except...it is clear that BOINC is grabbing ALL of my spare CPU capacity ALL of the time. This seems much more agressive than SETI@home which just used to tick along in the background using 3% or something.

My problem is that this PC is used in the living room and running the CPU at 100% all the time triggers the cooling fans and it's remarkably noisy. The relief when I disable BOINC is just wonderful. As well as the noise pollution, I doubt this is doing much for my PC's health.

So, can you let me know how I can stop BOINC doing this and gain some real control over how it uses my PC, please?

If not, I think I'll have to give my PC, my ears and my electricity bill a rest and allow my PC's idle capacity to become idle again.

Cheers,

Les

www.leshowarth.com

Um-hmm, sounds like another case for my proposal to reverse installer defaults away from starting Boinc when computer boots.

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"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Justice"

I am another longtime SETI@Home user who is having similar problems. I first downloaded BOINC back in March 2005, but then uninstalled it because it took over my computer. I continued running the old SETI@Home software, which never gave me problems, even though it ran in the background all the time.

Today I downloaded and installed the current version of BOINC, and once again the program took over my computer -- apparently using every little bit of CPU not actively in use by another application, and sometimes preventing other applications from performing properly.

Are there no "preference" settings that will actually work to force BOINC to limit its appetite for CPU?

I have changed my preferences to prevent BOINC from running when the computer is in use. It would be OK with me if it also ran when I am using my computer, but not if it insists on hogging resources.

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mistakeprone, USA (I'm generally competent, but I freely admit to making mistakes)

Today I downloaded and installed the current version of BOINC, and once again the program took over my computer -- apparently using every little bit of CPU not actively in use by another application, and sometimes preventing other applications from performing properly.

Are there no "preference" settings that will actually work to force BOINC to limit its appetite for CPU?

mistakeprone,

Welcome (back) to Boinc. Could you please give us some information to work with, such as your computer, OS, what project(s) you are working on, what other applications are conflicting with Boinc?

Michael

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"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Justice"

Now that I have changed my BOINC preferences, BOINC isn't running so there are no conflicts with other apps. [Wink]

However, I am running Windows XP Pro (service pack 1) on a Dell PC with Processor "x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2657 Mhz". I have a total of 256MB RAM. There is one hard drive with about 80 GB of unused space.

The only BOINC project that is installed is Seti@Home. Before I prevented BOINC from running while the computer is in use, the only other application that was running was Firefox 1.0.7 (but there were numerous open tabs in a total of 4 Firefox windows). Windows Task Manager showed 100% of CPU in use when both Firefox and BOINC were running, but only about 2% to 5% of CPU in use after I closed BOINC.

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mistakeprone, USA (I'm generally competent, but I freely admit to making mistakes)

Now that I have changed my BOINC preferences, BOINC isn't running so there are no conflicts with other apps. [Wink]

However, I am running Windows XP Pro (service pack 1) on a Dell PC with Processor "x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2657 Mhz". I have a total of 256MB RAM. There is one hard drive with about 80 GB of unused space.

The only BOINC project that is installed is Seti@Home. Before I prevented BOINC from running while the computer is in use, the only other application that was running was Firefox 1.0.7 (but there were numerous open tabs in a total of 4 Firefox windows). Windows Task Manager showed 100% of CPU in use when both Firefox and BOINC were running, but only about 2% to 5% of CPU in use after I closed BOINC.

Boinc is pretty good at stepping out of the way to make room for other apps, usually. From your description/specs, I think you're running a bit thin of resources there, and possibly overclocking, too? First thing is memory. 256MB is an absolute minimum for running XP Pro, I would suggest a minimum of 512MB for doing any "industrial-strength" processing. With only 256MB RAM, you're probably hammering that pagefile (virtual memory) awfully hard, which slows processing and can create a lag in switching out Boinc to make room for other processes. Boinc is designed to use all free processing power, so 99% when it is not competing with other work is considered normal.

If you feel the need to limit the amount of CPU that Boinc uses, I've heard of (but have no experience with) an app called "threadmaster". You'll have to Google for it, unless you have other means of finding it.

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"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Justice"

First thing is memory. 256MB is an absolute minimum for running XP Pro, I would suggest a minimum of 512MB for doing any "industrial-strength" processing. With only 256MB RAM, you're probably hammering that pagefile (virtual memory) awfully hard, which slows processing and can create a lag in switching out Boinc to make room for other processes. Boinc is designed to use all free processing power, so 99% when it is not competing with other work is considered normal.

If you feel the need to limit the amount of CPU that Boinc uses, I've heard of (but have no experience with) an app called "threadmaster". You'll have to Google for it, unless you have other means of finding it.

Wow, Microsoft recommends only 128 MB for Windows XP, and says that 64MB is the absolute minimum. I honestly didn't think I was attempting "industrial-strength" processing...

Thanks for the suggestion about "threadmaster." It can be downloaded on http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_network.php -- I'll check it out.

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mistakeprone, USA (I'm generally competent, but I freely admit to making mistakes)

Wow, Microsoft recommends only 128 MB for Windows XP, and says that 64MB is the absolute minimum. I honestly didn't think I was attempting "industrial-strength" processing...

mistakeprone,

Yes, you correctly cite MS recommendations, but take them with a huge caveat - that was pre-sp1, sp2, and 3 years of other updates, and in the context of MS trying to sell upgrades. I'll admit that I know someone who crunches with WinXP PRO on only 192 RAM, but it involved tons of tweaking, adjustments, killing off processes, etc, and results in loooonnnggg crunchtimes.

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"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Justice"

Yes, you correctly cite MS recommendations, but take them with a huge caveat - that was pre-sp1, sp2, and 3 years of other updates, and in the context of MS trying to sell upgrades.

Well, this computer is less than 3 years old, was purchased with Win XP Pro installed, and was not a bottom-range machine at the time of purchase. I know plenty of home (and business) computer users who have far less computing power.

If BOINC expects to recruit a diverse variety of contributors, the software needs to accommodate users with far less capacity than I have.

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mistakeprone, USA (I'm generally competent, but I freely admit to making mistakes)

Yes, you correctly cite MS recommendations, but take them with a huge caveat - that was pre-sp1, sp2, and 3 years of other updates, and in the context of MS trying to sell upgrades.

Well, this computer is less than 3 years old, was purchased with Win XP Pro installed, and was not a bottom-range machine at the time of purchase. I know plenty of home (and business) computer users who have far less computing power.

If BOINC expects to recruit a diverse variety of contributors, the software needs to accommodate users with far less capacity than I have.

And there is work underway to do just that. However, at the moment, we are not there yet.

Also, Microsoft's recommendations for resources are usually half of what you need. What they consider "adequate" performance is what you are seeing with those conflicts.

With machines still doubling about every 18 to 20 months, it does not take much time to move a "top end" machine to a has been. When I bought my lowest end machine it was the cat's pajamas but now is the slowest in the house ... worse, my last two "big" machines, which are only 6 months old, are no longer very impressive.

Anyway, welcome to BOINC, there are things you can do to make the system faster as others have said here by turning off "features" in XP, making sure you do not have spyware and the like. you can set preferences to not run when you work by time, or by activity detection.

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I am another longtime SETI@Home user who is having similar problems. I first downloaded BOINC back in March 2005, but then uninstalled it because it took over my computer. I continued running the old SETI@Home software, which never gave me problems, even though it ran in the background all the time.

I take it you do realise that the classic seti application also "took over your computer" as you call it? In terms of gobbling up 99% of your cpu, there is absolutely no difference between classic seti and BOINC seti. If you reckon that you can see a difference, you need to get your eyes checked.

Today I downloaded and installed the current version of BOINC, and once again the program took over my computer -- apparently using every little bit of CPU not actively in use by another application, and sometimes preventing other applications from performing properly.

This is absolute total nonsense for several reasons:-

1. BOINC itself is just the supporting framework for the science app. If you check with task manager you will be hard pressed to see BOINC using any significant amount of your cpu.

2. The Seti science app managed by BOINC uses whatever fraction of your cpu cycles that are not being used by a higher priority task. This was exactly the same for the classic seti app.

3. If you ran BOINC/Seti and Classic Seti on the same machine, classic would take over and BOINC/Seti would largely be excluded. BOINC/Seti is less aggressive and runs at lower priority than Classic Seti.

4. If you reckon that BOINC/Seti can prevent your other apps from performing properly then it would be even more true of Classic Seti, so how come you didn't see the same problems back in the classic days? How come you give classic seti a big thumbs up and the less aggressive BOINC/Seti a big thumbs down? Blind prejudice is all I can think of.

Nobody claims that BOINC is perfect. It has many faults that can be criticised legitimately. At least have the intellectual honesty to criticise it for the appropriate reasons.

I suggest you give BOINC a chance to show you how good it actually is for doing exactly what it was designed to do. Once you get used to it you cannot fail to notice that it's just a very convenient way of running the same Seti science app with some very significant advantages over the old system.

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Cheers,
Gary.

If BOINC expects to recruit a diverse variety of contributors, the software needs to accommodate users with far less capacity than I have.

This is another point on which you are quite ill-informed.

I run multiple BOINC projects (EAH, LHC and Seti) on a large number of machines that I personally own or are owned by friends, relatives, etc. I own a small business which has acquired various vintage hardware over the years. There are several old clunkers like PII-350 and Celeron-466, Celeron-500 etc, all of which have office duties and all of which run BOINC. People using these machines for normal office duties have no difficulty and don't even notice that BOINC projects are running in the background. How could that possibly be true if BOINC is such a dog as you suggest?

The simple answer is that you haven't been prepared to give BOINC a fair test. You have hardware that is far superior to some of the low end boxes I'm running BOINC projects on. In fact it works remarkably well with a whole range of hardware that most sane people would have decommissioned ages ago :).

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Cheers,
Gary.

I am another longtime SETI@Home user who is having similar problems. I first downloaded BOINC back in March 2005, but then uninstalled it because it took over my computer. I continued running the old SETI@Home software, which never gave me problems, even though it ran in the background all the time.

I am yet another longtime SETI@home user who is having similar problems. The old SETI ran only when my Screen Saver was running. Now when BOINC is running my Task Manager Performance graph show 100%. If I stop BOINC it drops to less than 10%. I am running the latest version of BOINC and it certainly doesn't wait for my screensaver to kick in before it grabs 100%. It does it immediately.




I take it you do realise that the classic seti application also "took over your computer" as you call it? In terms of gobbling up 99% of your cpu, there is absolutely no difference between classic seti and BOINC seti. If you reckon that you can see a difference, you need to get your eyes checked.

Today I downloaded and installed the current version of BOINC, and once again the program took over my computer -- apparently using every little bit of CPU not actively in use by another application, and sometimes preventing other applications from performing properly.

This is absolute total nonsense for several reasons:-

1. BOINC itself is just the supporting framework for the science app. If you check with task manager you will be hard pressed to see BOINC using any significant amount of your cpu.

2. The Seti science app managed by BOINC uses whatever fraction of your cpu cycles that are not being used by a higher priority task. This was exactly the same for the classic seti app.

3. If you ran BOINC/Seti and Classic Seti on the same machine, classic would take over and BOINC/Seti would largely be excluded. BOINC/Seti is less aggressive and runs at lower priority than Classic Seti.

4. If you reckon that BOINC/Seti can prevent your other apps from performing properly then it would be even more true of Classic Seti, so how come you didn't see the same problems back in the classic days? How come you give classic seti a big thumbs up and the less aggressive BOINC/Seti a big thumbs down? Blind prejudice is all I can think of.

Nobody claims that BOINC is perfect. It has many faults that can be criticised legitimately. At least have the intellectual honesty to criticise it for the appropriate reasons.

I suggest you give BOINC a chance to show you how good it actually is for doing exactly what it was designed to do. Once you get used to it you cannot fail to notice that it's just a very convenient way of running the same Seti science app with some very significant advantages over the old system.

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I am yet another longtime SETI@home user who is having similar problems. The old SETI ran only when my Screen Saver was running. Now when BOINC is running my Task Manager Performance graph show 100%. If I stop BOINC it drops to less than 10%. I am running the latest version of BOINC and it certainly doesn't wait for my screensaver to kick in before it grabs 100%. It does it immediately.

When you install BOINC, depending on the type of install you do, you are offered the options of "Launch on startup" and "Make default screensaver". If you installed as a service, or chose to launch it on startup, then yes, it will run all the time. If you wish it to run only when the screensaver kicks in, then either uninstall as a service and do the "single user" (default) install and don't check that option, or remove it from your list of things to run on startup.

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Hi, I've been reading through this thread, and I want to respond with a point and a question.

First of all, let me state my situation. I setup some new winboxen at work, and installed the new boinc_5.13 to them, but it had that funky bug where it couldn't connect to localhost. So I came here, found the 5.14, and all seems well enough, all connected to the project, and each box is happily crunching two simultaneous wu's.

Here's the odd part: My CPU usage, either in the inferior TaskManager or in Sysinternals' superior ProcExp.exe shows 100% cpu usage. I installed single user mode. Now, I KNOW that it isn't true 100% of all cpu, because I can still do everything normally, even heavy image moving, with absolutely no noticeable loss to overhead. I think any of you saying your computer is running like a dog with BOINC has either some other problem with the system, or you are imagining things when you see TaskManager at 100% and get worried. (psychosomatic pebkac) But really, BOINC is crafted to be *nice* to your cpu, (hehe, nice, get it?).

The point/question is this: Is there a change in the way the nice level is reported/accessed? Because the older win32 BOINC software never showed me this much cpu usage.

Let me restate, I DON'T think it is causing any more real usage or slowing anything down, none whatsoever. What I AM saying is that it appears the way it reports is different. For all I know, it's XP that's the problem, because in all my other systems (which are all various flavors of Linux) I can see either 100% or 0% cpu, depending upon how I configure nice level reporting.

Other than this curiosity, all is perfectly good. And this whole post is no complaint, but I am a little concerned that my unknowing co-workers will think something is wrong say something and cause me to lose the privilege of running BOINC on the work winboxen, even if nothing is really wrong. And I am joking about the psychosomatic pebkac, just trying to inject a little levity into the conversation. (hehe, 'psychosomatic pebkac', can I copyleft that?)

Have a great weekend!

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The task usage shows so high with BOINC running because BOINC is using cycles that aren't being used by other processes in your computer. But as far as I can tell, there has been no interference with any application that I am currently using. My applications appear to work just as fast as they always have. This is on a Mac, but presumably BOINC is operating in the same way on a PC.

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How come you give classic seti a big thumbs up and the less aggressive BOINC/Seti a big thumbs down? Blind prejudice is all I can think of.

The answer to "how come" is that I experienced unusual performance problems on my computer after installing BOINC. Since the installation of BOINC was the only change I had made to my computer configuration recently, I had not experienced these problems before installing BOINC, and I had not experienced similar problems during the last several years of running SETI, I concluded that BOINC was responsible. You may call this blind prejudice, but I call it a logical troubleshooting process.

After several days' experience with BOINC (mostly crunching data for the climateprediction project), I have to agree that BOINC behaves itself nicely most of the time. There is, however, a continuing problem of interference with other applications. The interference occurs when BOINC makes its repeated futile attempts to contact the non-responsive SETI@home server in order to upload finished work. I have an always-on broadband connection, so the communication attempts occur in the background, but when BOINC is trying to talk to the server, it seems to get in the way of other work. The problem is less severe now that I have set BOINC not to try to get new work from SETI, but there are several finished units that it is trying to upload.