I just installed the latest BOINC on my workstation.
When I attempt to do anything with it, it wants me to select a computer... I select 'localhost', and it wants a password. What password does it want? No matter which one I use, it comes back with an error message of"The password you have provided is incorrect, please try again" I have used every password I've had for the last few years and get the same message. WTF?

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The manager and deamon use a password stored in the file gui_rpc_auth.cfg. It can be set by editing that file with a text editor. Restarting the computer will normally get the password passed automatically.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

If BOINC is being launched on startup and you are having this problem, try exiting BOINC and relaunching. If this works, you may not be able to have BOINC load on startup until a new version is available (this is a known problem).

If it fails even when launched manually, some other Windows process is likely using port 1043, which is used for communication between the Manager and the BOINC daemon; to verify, the latest BOINC is V5.2.13, which includes some fixes for this problem. I am not a Windows expert (I can spell it...) but from other threads on this problem, I have learned that "netstat -a" will show you the ports that are in use and hopefully what program is using them. It is also possible that a firewall will be blocking even internal communications between programs, and you will have to "open" them for boincmgr.exe and boinc.exe.

There are apparently some programs that get a port "at random", and a reboot can cause them to get a different one, after which BOINC will be happy, so a reboot may solve the problem.

The password that is being asked for is a randomly-assigned string of numbers and letters that can be found in the "gui_rpc_auth.cfg" file - but you should NOT need to know this, or change it, although as a last resort pending a new version, you could replace that random mess with a password of your choosing (using Notepad), being certain to leave the trailing 'return' at the end of the line. This _might_ get you past the error dialog each time, although obviously it is not a good permanent solution.

Please post back with any results or other info - quite a few have had this problem, and I believe almost all have been able to get around it.

EDIT:: John and I posted simultaneously - his advice to try the reboot first is better than my list of possibilities...

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