I had BOINC working without problems in Vista. I recently upgraded to 6.4.7. After that I have not been able to run BOINC. Right after the upgrade I got the BOINC started by starting BOINC manager as Administrator. It did a reinstall (removed BOINC and installed it again). After that I cannot always start it even as an administrator. Sometimes it starts and sometimes not.

When I start BOINC manager as a normal user, I get the following error message: "You currently are not authorized to manage the client. Please contact your administrator to add you to the 'boinc_users' local user group". First problem is that I don't know how to do that in Vista.

If I start BOINC manager as an administator I get a similar message, but in Finnish. My desktop language is Finnish.

Any help is appreciated

I have forwarded this complaint (as well as everyone else his complaint in similar threads) to the developers. They'll just have to come up with a fool-proof fix for this.

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My 6.4.7 BOINC manager is working fine.
Did you uninstal the old BOINC manager before instaling 6.4.7?

I run Win VISTA on my laptop. I just updated to BOINC 6.4.7. The problem is that no BOINC manager downloaded with the update. The only .exe files that downloaded were boinccmd.exe and boinctray.exe. I tried to go through the Win program & features in the Control Panel and pressed "repair" and also "change" which in turn referred me to run "repair". Repair only briefly (3 or 4 seconds) went through "install" and "configure" with no apparent change or repair.

The release notes just mentioned that the manager name had changed. When double clicking on the boinccmd.exe file a black screen flashes (for 1/10 of a second) and then nothing else. Double clicking on the boinctray.exe does absolutely nothing. The boinctray.exe icon does not appear in the system tray as the title would imply and boinctray.exe seems to activate nothing. Rebooting also does not make the boinctray appear in the system tray.

I am leary of uninstalling the BOINC app as I am not sure the programs running on BOINC would be safe from deletion along weith the BOINC app. And I am not sure that once I reinstalled a fresh copy of BOINC, after unstalling the current one, that the projects would be able to reconnect at the point I last had them running at. That is, would I reconnect, but now start a new project file and the old one just disappeared without finishing?

I had no problem updating BOINC to version 6.4.7 on my desktop running Win XP and reading these other install problems, I didn't find where anyone had a problem downloading the boincmgr.exe.

Thoughts please? Anyone? I am currently not able to run BOINC at all as there is no mgr on my system.

Thank you,

Dave

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I run Win VISTA on my laptop. I just updated to BOINC 6.4.7. The problem is that no BOINC manager downloaded with the update. The only .exe files that downloaded were boinccmd.exe and boinctray.exe.

Downloaded from where? The Installers you can get from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php are complete packages with everything in them. There is no way to download the individual parts of BOINC from Berkeley, so where did you get them from? (There's also no updater in BOINC itself).

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Thank you for your reply.

I downloaded the 6.4.7 version from the BOINC website: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php. When the download completed, I tried to find the BOINC mgr. Apparently, this 6.4.7 version of BOINC splits into two folders, one in Program Files and the other into Program Data. The only thing in program files is a folder called "Location". Everything else is in the Program Data folder. When looking in the Program Data folder, only two executables were there - boinctray.exe & boinccmd.exe. There was no boincmgr.exe. Reading the release notes, there were name changes to BOINC manager and BOINC command line tool to 'boincmgr' and 'boinccmd', respectively, but only the boinccmd.exe was downloaded and was in the folder. The boincmgr.exe was not in either folder following download.

I have since deleted this 6.4.7 version and replaced it with my backup copy of 5.10.45 I saved just before I tried the upgrade. My project is running just fine on my laptop right now. But I would like to upgrade to the later BOINC version to agree with my desktop.

Dave

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BOINC 6 does do sandboxing, meaning that especially for Windows Vista the executable directory and Data directory are separated. Vista does not like it much when 'things' write to files in the \Program Files\ directory. BOINC writes to its files a lot.

So all your BOINC executables will be in the default C:\Program Files\BOINC directory, while the rest of the files will be in the Data directory, which as you have found, in Vista is in C:\ProgramData\ (with or without a space)

If there is a boinccmd.exe and a boinctray.exe in your data directory, then they may be older versions that got migrated by accident. They should have been deleted, while the installer will write the new files to the C:\Program Files\BOINC directory. You sure these files aren't read-only?

Anyway, in all Windows versions, when you installed BOINC with the installer (normal way), you can always start BOINC Manager by going Start->Programs->BOINC ... I don't see why it wouldn't be that way in Vista. So why do difficult?

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My first upgrade was without uninstalling the older version. Later I removed the installation and installed 6.4.7 again. My problem now is that as a normal user I can start Boinc manager, but it cannot connect to the client. I haven't checked if the client is running or not. If I open Boinc folder and run boincmgr.exe as Administrator, the manager opens and connects to the client. It will stay open till the next reboot. Clearly this is a rights issue, i.e. my normal user hasn't the right to connect to the client but Administrator has.

I may have the same setup that you are attempting to create: Vista, home premium, multiple users, all with BOINC manager access. I have this setup on two Vista 64 boxes. Here is what I think is important:

1) During the installation, you get the opportunity to select both the program directory and the data directory
2) Let the program directory default to where it wants, but change the data directory to c:\users\public\BOINC (any directory under public is fine). Manually create this directory first AND manually add ‘full’ data access for each user on the system.
3) Install the boinc manager
4) Do NOT automatically start the manager on the last installation step (you don’t want it to lock access to the files that you just installed yet)
5) Now you must go back to c:\users\public\BOINC and reset the privileges so that every user on your system has ‘full’ access. Step #2’s privilege pre-set was optional, but this is essential. All files need to be reset and you need to address errors individually. Propagate the privileges by selecting each user and then unchecking/checking ‘full’ access on the root directory (ie on c:\users\public\BOINC). If you get any errors, then manually (individually) set the file privileges. This step is either very quick or very tedious (one of my systems had several files that needed to be addressed manually).
6) Finally, find the BOINC manager’s executable directory. Open up the read/write access for each of your users (I just did ‘full’, but I’m not sure that complete access is required).
7) Now, any of your users and/or your admin account can control the BOINC manager.

In Vista, I think the key trick is step #2. Vista seems to be able to share files in users\public more easily than in other directories.

I installed boinc 6.6.20 hoping that it would solve this problem. It doesn't. After installing boinc worked fine but after reboot I get the same message than earlier. I am not authorized to manage the client. According to message I should add my user name to user group boinc_users. I don't know how to do that and I believe that user groups are not supported in Vista Home. At least I haven't found a way to make any new groups or edit old ones.

My first version of boinc in this system was (IIRC) 6.2.x. It worked fine. After 6.4.x and now 6.6.20, it doesn't work. I wonder what has changed.

I think I have this problem fixed in the latest Dev builds.

I wasn't doing the right things with the 'Everyone' well known group.

Could you try 6.6.23 from the download page?

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----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Could you try 6.6.23 from the download page?

Since at the time of writing it isn't there yet, best try here for 32bit Windows and here for 64bit Windows.

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I was on holiday, so I couldn't test earlier. I installed 6.6.23 and it worked after installation. However, after reboot I get the same error message.

NO IT IS STILL HAVING PROBLEMS. WHAT KIND OF A 'FEATURE' IS THIS? THE OLD 5.X VERSION WORKED LIKE A DREAM.

i HAVE VISTA HOME PREMIUM, INSTALLED IT IN MY ADMIN ACCOUNT AND MADE SURE I CHECKED THAT ALL USERS HAD RIGHTS TO RUN, BUT WHEN i LOG INTO MY STANDARD ACCOUNT IT DOESNT RUN.

THEN I UPGRADED MY STANDARD ACCOUNT TO ADMIN RIGHTS AND TRIED TO REINSTALL BUT GETTING ERROR "CAN'T CREATE BOINC ADMIN USER GROUP"

THESE PERMISSION PROBLEMS ARE NOT WORKING. CANT WE JUST REVERT BACK TO WHAT WE HAD IN 5.X?????

1) You didn't say exactly what version of BOINC you tried out.
2) Could you please stop posting in all CAPS? This is considered shouting on the internet and is very rude. If you want to get further help, best type in normal type set.

What may have worked like a dream for you doesn't for a lot of other people. Vista doesn't allow for BOINC to run in the default C:\Program Files\BOINC\ directory as it doesn't allow for programs to write to directories in the \Program Files\ directory.

But on the other hand, nothing says you need to upgrade. If your 5.x.x works fine for you and you don't want to run CUDA, you can easily stay on 5.whatever.

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Hi,

Just installed 6.4.7 in vista.

Got it to work in admin account. During install, I checked "allow all users to run ..." also was informed to check "allow to run as service for underpriviledged accounts"

then I logged into my non admin account, and when I open up the boinc panel, everything is blank. When I try to attach a project, it says "the password you have provided is incorrect, please try again". Where do I enter a password?

Thanks,
s

Ok got it to work. Basically did a hack with permissions as Gary suggested in post above : Message 24160

The option to run as all users during the install is obviously is a bug and doesn't work.

Sorry, but this is really messed up now. I know a lot of users are really in to "adjusting" their systems, playing with settings etc, but all I want to do is install BOINC on Vista and have it work.

I had it working for a few weeks or months before April, but not now. I have re-installed, un-installed and re-installed a few times, tried to open it up to all users, but with partial and varied results. Currently, it only seems to start and run with one of three user accounts on my computer, a non-administrative user. Unfortunately, this user is the least active, so most of the time the computer is not running BOINC.

I will at some time in the future, try the file permission fix in message 24160, but I shouldn't have to do that if the program is operation properly. Many people who might otherwise be interested in running BOINC on their Vista systems will simply give up, reducing the pool of processing power.

I love being involved with volunteer computing, and fortunately my old XP system downstairs just keeps churning away, slowly but surely. I am disappointed with BOINC on Vista. Maybe Windows 7(?) coming out this fall will be better.

Joe

One critical bit of info that's missing from your post: what version of BOINC are you using? Have you tried the latest available, 6.6.31? Also, are you installing with the protected application execution mode?

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Unfortunately I cannot verify the version I currently have loaded, as I have no access to BOINC manager when logged in as myself, which was part of my point. …………………………………………………………… Excuse the wait while I log off and log in as someone else on my system. ……………………… There, I’m back. The version I am using currently is 6.6.28, downloaded within the last couple of weeks. The problem is that there have been several versions supposedly compatible with Vista, yet the problems continue.

As to the question "...are you installing with the protected application execution mode?” I cannot answer that. I do not know what that means, and I am semi-literate in computer things. Again to another point in my original message, I shouldn't have to start modifying all sorts of thing in my OS to get this application to work. The average user, which is probably about 98% of all users, also doesn’t know and doesn’t care. They just want to download the software and use it. If we really want to expand volunteer computing to maximize the potential of this fantastic tool, then we need a simple program to do it, not one that requires the tweaking of my computer system.

Please don't take this the wrong way; I am simply trying to raise a flag here for the betterment of the group. When I download or upgrade my Adobe Reader or Java software, I don’t need to do anything. They install and I keep on doing whatever it was I was doing. Up until April 1 of this year, BOINC worked on my Vista system. I originally thought the problem had to do with the last famous virus that was set to strike on April 1, but that no longer appears to be the case. The program just isn’t work well, if at all.

I have been thinking of moving up to an i7 system, but if I go with Vista as the operating system, well guess what, my money will have been wasted, as BOINC may not even run on that system. Again, I continue to plod along with my old Pentium 4, XP system.

Can we PLEASE get a version of BOINC that installs cleanly on Vista and works?

Respectfully

Joe