Hi,
I have been having a problem launching the BOINC manager after the installation.

On my Vista home premium installation (as well as on an older XP SP3 machine), I have a standard user account, for every day use, and an admin account, for installing software and running some old software like GordianKnot that work properly only on admin accounts.

Installing the boinc_6.10.56_windows_intelx86.exe file goes without any problem and the program group is indeed created in the Start menu.

However, I can't launch the manager from my standard account despite having ticked the "allow all users to control the manager" (don't remember the exact wording) in the setup program: Vista reports a missing file which is in fact (discovered when browsing to the install directory) an access denied problem. I've never had any such problems with other programs.

I have to mention that I had previously installed BOINC on a non-system disk. I noticed that the manager cannot connect when I'm under the standard account unless, in that session, I had also previously logged into my admin account. Thinking that the installation in a place other than "C:\Program Files" was the root of the problems, I uninstalled it and reinstalled it under that more conventional folder.

I also mention that these problems never occurred on the XP machine.

Clearly, the security options have not been thought for use under an unpreviledged account, which case, I think, should have been taken into account.

While writing this message, I tried one more time. Via the explorer, I was prompted for the admin password when I tried to see the contents of C:/Programs/BOINC. Then I relaunched the manager: the status read "Connexion à localhost en cours" (meaning "connecting to localhost") for a few seconds before telling me that I'm not currently allowed to manage the client; I should ask my admin to add me to the "boinc_users" group. Which can't be done on Vista Home Premium as the plugin that handles this task in the management console is deactivated by Microsoft on this edition of Vista...

To sum things up, if I want to run BOINC on Vista without trouble, I need to either make my usual account an admin, or switch to the admin account each time my computer starts. Which is really a no go for me. So I'll wait until BOINC is made to work on unpriviledged accounts. In the meantime, maybe someone can explain why administrative rights would be necessary at anytime other than at the installation?

Cheers!

I should ask my admin to add me to the "boinc_users" group. Which can't be done on Vista Home Premium as the plugin that handles this task in the management console is deactivated by Microsoft on this edition of Vista...

It can be done. Just not through a GUI.

Open a command line window.
Then type net localgroup boinc_users "your_user_name" /add (Without any quotation marks).
Next hit Enter.

To see who is in any group, use:
net localgroup boinc_users (Enter)
net localgroup boinc_admins (Enter)

And yes, it's known that sometimes the installer can't work it out. Eventually, hopefully in the next BOINC version, a newer installer will be used which can do it all. At this moment it can also sometimes be fixed by doing a repair installation. Doesn't work always.

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