I currently have Boinc 6.10.18 installed. I routinely notice boincmgr.exe varying in CPU utilization from 0% to upwards of 57%. Spikes to 50% utilization occur around every 5 seconds (a rough approximation). This happens regardless of whether my projects are paused or active.

Is this normal behavior? If not, what can I do to help troubleshoot it?

My system specifications are as follows:

OS: Win7 x64
CPU: Pentium D 945 (3.4ghz x2)
GPU: Nvidia 8800GT 512mb
Chipset: Intel 945P
Ram: 4GB (3.5GB usable)

Do you have a lot of tasks in queue?
If you do, does this behaviour go away when you open BOINC Manager->Advanced view->Tasks tab->click Show active tasks ??

Apropos, you do know you can exit BOINC Manager (File->Exit) and that if you choose in the exit dialog not to stop running science applications on exiting the Manager, that the client will continue but BM will exit?

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Thanks for the very prompt reply.

I have two active tasks and two more in queue (for a total of four). I don't assume that this counts as "a lot?" In case it matters, all tasks are CPU based and all are from the same Project.

Toggling between "show active tasks" and "show all" does not appear to have any effect on the problem.

I will close boincmgr.exe as a workaround. That said, I do like a visual indication as to whether I currently have science running or paused. If there is anything that I can do to troubleshoot or help solve the issue, please let me know.


edit:

The problem appears to go away if I select the Simple view instead of Advanced. Also, with Advanced selected, the high utilization occurs even if boincmgr is minimized and science paused.

I will continue to test and see if these recent observations hold up.

Are you using the CPU throttle option?
Which project or projects do you run?
Checked your anti-virus/other anti-malware programs, that they aren't actively scanning your BOINC and BOINC Data directories?

Any files with weird sizes in your BOINC Data directory?

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Are you using the CPU throttle option? No, boinc can use 100%


Which project or projects do you run? Currently, World Community Grid / nutritious rice for the world

Checked your anti-virus/other anti-malware programs, that they aren't actively scanning your BOINC and BOINC Data directories? I am using Kaspersky Internet Security 9.0.0.736. Boinc and the science projects are trusted, but not fully excluded.

Any files with weird sizes in your BOINC Data directory? Nothing stood out.


I am not sure if you saw my above edit, but the problem goes away when I switch to simple view. Only advanced view seems to cause the high cpu utilization.

Are you using the CPU throttle option? No, boinc can use 100%


Which project or projects do you run? Currently, World Community Grid / nutritious rice for the world

Checked your anti-virus/other anti-malware programs, that they aren't actively scanning your BOINC and BOINC Data directories? I am using Kaspersky Internet Security 9.0.0.736. Boinc and the science projects are trusted, but not fully excluded.

Any files with weird sizes in your BOINC Data directory? Nothing stood out.


I am not sure if you saw my above edit, but the problem goes away when I switch to simple view. Only advanced view seems to cause the high cpu utilization.

The manager can do quite frequent updates. But 4 should not cause any problems at all.
But closing the BOINC manger with [X] will reduce this. Should almost be the same as closing it.
You can try an alternative GUI like BoincTasks http://boinc.berkeley.edu/addons.php

The manager can do quite frequent updates. But 4 should not cause any problems at all.
But closing the BOINC manger with [X] will reduce this. Should almost be the same as closing it.

Thanks for the suggestion. For what it's worth, if I minimize the manager to tray ("close it with [X]") while it is in advanced view, the CPU usage does not change -- it will still spike to around 50% (an entire core) every few seconds. Simple view (regardless of whether active or minimized to tray), never seems to cause such CPU utilization.

Using simple view is an effective workaround for me. That said, if there is anything I can do to test/troublshoot/fix the problem I'm having with advanced view, please let me know.

After a second report on this on another forum, I have forwarded this to the developers.

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Thanks Ageless. Nice avatar by the way.

I seem to have the same problem, cpu usage goes up to above 10% (I7 HT). boincmgr has so far eaten 2 hours 25 minutes in about 9 hours wall clock time. I guess that CPU time could have been put to good use elsewhere :-)

BOINC 6.10.18, CORE I7, Windows7 64 bit. Excluding BOINC's datafiles from antivirus made no difference. Switching to simple view solves the issue instantly.

According to process explorer, boincmgr has 7 threads, and one of them is responsible for 99% of this behavior. It is classified as : boincmgr.exe+0x10e1f0

The cpu usage spikes at every 5 seconds.

EDIT : Upon further investigation, when in advanced mode, boincmgr does hundreds of registry reads when the CPU spikes. In simple mode, this does not happen. Keys almost all start with:

HKCU\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager

EDIT : Upon further investigation, when in advanced mode, boincmgr does hundreds of registry reads when the CPU spikes. In simple mode, this does not happen. Keys almost all start with:

HKCU\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager

BOINC keeps all the grid layout information (column to sort on, column widths, etc.) for all the advanced view tabs there. A few reads at startup would be expected and legitimate, but it shouldn't need to reassure itself that nothing has changed several hundred times a second.

What happens if you apply the tasks view filter to only show active tasks?

No difference, and I have only 6 tasks active and 4 in queue.

EDIT : Upon further investigation, when in advanced mode, boincmgr does hundreds of registry reads when the CPU spikes. In simple mode, this does not happen. Keys almost all start with:

HKCU\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager

BOINC keeps all the grid layout information (column to sort on, column widths, etc.) for all the advanced view tabs there. A few reads at startup would be expected and legitimate, but it shouldn't need to reassure itself that nothing has changed several hundred times a second.

Agree, but it appears that that's exactly what it does. Well, not 100's of times a second, but at least once (100's of keys) every 5 seconds. I see it checking for fontsubstitues, column width etc.

Just spent a few minutes looking at BOINC Manager v6.10.19 on WinXP 32-bit: didn't see any signs of excess CPU spikes, and it only had 4 threads.

One thing struck me: if you open two copies of boincmgr, and change the layout in one of them, you could observe whether the second copy follows the first - either five seconds later, or when you close the first copy: that would confirm that it was re-reading the registry. Mine didn't, which might suggest a difference in either Win7 or 64-bit mode.

The developers are following this thread... I'll be giving a how-to later on for how to make a good dump of what is going on. They're interested in that. First have to write it. :-)

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The developers are really following this thread... through email to me. ;-)

What they need is a good log. I made a log showing all that happened on Windows XP SP3 with BOINC 6.10.19 (32bit). It was already over 33MB big... so this isn't for the fainthearted. Rigorous zipping is needed if you want to send such a log to the developers. 7-zip or RAR preferred. (My 33.5MB went down to a 675KB 7zip file).

What we need is logs of, preferably the 64bit version of Windows, 64bit versions of BOINC, which do show the high CPU spikes.

For this, please get Process Monitor. It's free, it's from System Internals (now Microsoft).
Install it in a directory on its own, don't start it yet.

Close as many background running programs as possible. Browsers, chat clients, streaming music apps, temperature control, overclock control, etc. etc.

Since we're going to test what BOINC Manager does, you can leave the client and science applications running. Make sure that you switch to Advanced view so that when it next starts up, it actually starts in Advanced view. Exit BOINC Manager and uncheck the option to "Stop running science applications when exiting the Manager". Click OK after that.

I hope you have a shortcut link to BOINC Manager some place, on your desktop or in your Quick Launch bar. Might be useful.

OK, start ProcMon and then as soon as possible start BOINC Manager. Wait one minute, then switch to the ProcMon window->File->Save->Format Extensible Markup Language (XML), give it a name and save it off.

Then exit ProcMon through File->Exit.
Navigate to the directory where you saved the log file. It'll be big.
Use Winzip, WinRAR or 7zip to zip the file, please use the hardest, strongest compression possible. For 7zip that would be solid, Ultra, LZMA with a dictionary size of 64MB and a 256 word size.

Then send this compressed log file to Rom Walton, give a small description of what you see, which OS you run and which BOINC version this is with.
He can be reached on this recaptcha secured email address.

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I can do all that, but it sounds like my setup is the same as yours (even to the SP3). I take it you didn't see the spikes and extra threads that DigiK-oz had? So I'm on standby: can log if needed, but won't do a duplicate at this stage.

Good of you to say that, I had omitted the request for logs of 64bit Windows/64bit BOINC only. It appears there's no problem with the 32bit version of BOINC.

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OK, I have sent a procmon logfile to the e-mail address mentioned.

As for the suggestion of running 2 instances of boincmgr, changing some layout and see what happens : I changed various layout settings (column width, window size etc) in one boincmgr, and the other one did NOT follow up, i.e. it kept its own settings, even after exiting the first one.

Re-reading the thread, I notice that I am running the same antivirus package and version as nemesisdb is. Coincidence, maybe...but then again :-)

OK, I have sent a procmon logfile to the e-mail address mentioned.

Thanks.

Re-reading the thread, I notice that I am running the same antivirus package and version as nemesisdb is. Coincidence, maybe...but then again :-)

Doubtful that it's coincidence. See http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=7671#100700 for a whole run-down on what Kapersky does. Might be useful stuff for Rom to read as well.

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Doubtful that it's coincidence. See http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=7671#100700 for a whole run-down on what Kapersky does. Might be useful stuff for Rom to read as well.

Ok, to prevent us barking up the wrong tree, I uninstalled KIS2010 (I tried disabling it before, even exiting it, to no avail), and during the uninstall, even before the reboot, the CPU spikes were gone. After the reboot I let boincmgr run for some time, no spikes.

I then re-installed Kaspersky, all default install options. The spikes did NOT appear after this fresh install.

I've had several issues with KIS2010 before,slowing down my system, which were (temporarily) fixed by a clean install, or sometimes just a repair install. Guess this is just another one of those quirks. I'm so fed up with KIS2010....

Anyway, problem solved. NOT a BOINC problem. Thanks for your assistance and please inform Rom he can go ahead and do something usefull with his time instead of chasing Kaspersky's bugs.