I'm in a strange situation with 6.6.41, any suggestions please?

I updated 4 machines (1 * Windows 7, 3 * Windows XP Home) from 6.6.38 to 6.6.41. The Windows 7 and one of the XP machines updated with no problem. The other two XP machines both complained that the manager was unable to connect to the client. Reverted to 6.6.38 on those two machines and all was OK.

I tried running 6.6.41 both as a service and standalone with the same result.

To cut a long story short I ended up reinstalling XP on one of the machines. With a fully updated system, with only an AV installed on it, 6.6.41 installs (in both modes) correctly but won't run - can't connect to client. Uninstall 6.6.41 and install 6.6.38 - no problems.

From the lack of other complaints here I guess I'm the only one seeing this - but I've no idea what could be causing it! The two machines that fail have different processors (1 Intel and 1 AMD), adequate memory, identical firewall settings to the working machine. In any case, if 6.6.38 works with the machines current settings (firewall, AV etc) I would have thought 6.6.41 would as well.

Shrug! Any suggestions please.

Ian

BOINC (boinc.exe) and BOINC Manager (boincmgr.exe) are defined in your firewall, allowed to talk to each other on TCP port 31416?

Navigate Start->(Settings->)Control Panel->Windows Firewall
Click the Exceptions tab.
Click Add program.
- Click Navigate (I think? I don't have an English Windows)
- Navigate to your BOINC directory (by default C:\Program Files\BOINC\)
- Click on boinc.exe
- Click on OK.
- Click Add program.
- Click Navigate
- Navigate to your BOINC directory.
- Click on boincmgr.exe
- Click on OK.

Click on Add port.
- Fill in for Name: BOINC, port 80, click OK.
Click a second time on Add port.
- Fill in for Name: BOINC, port 31416, click OK.
Click a third time on Add port.
- Fill in for Name: BOINC Manager, port 31416, click OK
- Click OK.

You have now added BOINC to the allowed programs through your firewall.

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OK, I'll try it when the current tasks have finished.

Is this something new in 6.6.41 though? As I said in my original post, 6.6.38 works fine with the Windows firewall settings I have - as has every version of BOINC that I've used for the last umpteen years.

Ian

Jord, have you ever seen Windows Firewall actually cause problems with BOINC in localhost?

Also, 'Add Port' is for incoming connections...

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OK, I've just tried setting firewall exceptions. The Windows firewall won't let me add two programs with the same port so I just added the programs - I believe that just lets through _any_ port for those applications?

Anyway, no change - still can't run 6.6.41.

However, I've just remembered that I get a different error message when installed as a service.. I did most of my testing yesterday using the normal installation and had forgotten that fact. The error message when installing as a service is ...

"BOINC Manager is not able to start a BOINC client. Please launch the Conrol Panel->Administrative Tools->Services applet and start the BOINC service."

When I try that I get ...

"Could not start the BOINC service on Local Computer.
Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion."

As before, when I uninstalled 6.6.41 and installed 6.6.38 it connedted to the client (in service mode) immediately.

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As per this thread, the 6.6.41 release was to fix a "zero bytes" problem.
If you're not having that problem, then 6.6.38 should be as far as you need to go before the 6.10.* version is released.

Jord, have you ever seen Windows Firewall actually cause problems with BOINC in localhost?

Yes, on one of my systems. When I do not explicitely put boinc.exe and boincmgr.exe in the firewall there, I can never get the Manager to connect to the client. Same XP as on this system, but knowing computers are finicky, I stopped wondering.

Also, 'Add Port' is for incoming connections...

Wasn't sure there... then again, when the parts talk to each other, they use an outgoing and incoming port. I figured it doesn't hurt to set the ports.

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Also, 'Add Port' is for incoming connections...

Wasn't sure there... then again, when the parts talk to each other, they use an outgoing and incoming port. I figured it doesn't hurt to set the ports.

But as far as the firewall is concerned, it's neither incoming nor outgoing if it never goes (or comes from) outside the computer. And allowing port 80 incoming is probably a bad idea unless you knowingly run a webserver and want outside access.

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As per this thread, the 6.6.41 release was to fix a "zero bytes" problem.
If you're not having that problem, then 6.6.38 should be as far as you need to go before the 6.10.* version is released.

Fair enough, I had reverted to 6.6.38 anyway. I was just concerned about what the problem might be, and whether I was going to continue having issues on those machines with future BOINC releases.

I just installed 6.10.16 on one of the failing machines and it runs without a problem - the difficulty only appears to be with 6.6.41.

As I said before <shrug> :-)

Ian

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Due to many more problems with 6.6.41, the developers have decided to revert to 6.6.38 as the recommended version on Windows until 6.10 is ready.

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