I'm a system admin at a small firm. I've given thought to installing BOINC on users' systems as they come to be rebuilt (They go completely unused for 12-16 hours a day...)

If I were to do this, I'd want to disable the messages that occasionally pop up when the system is restarted. Is there a way to do that?

Also... is there any way to install BOINC "as a service"? I remember being able to do that with a very old client but don't see the option any longer.

Thanks!

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Yes, a "service" installation would be the way to go - that way, BOINC could be doing something useful even when no user was logged in to the workstation. It's still available, though known as "Protected Application Execution" in recent versions. If you're installing manually, you'll need to click the 'Advanced' button on the third installer screen to give yourself the ability to select/deselect the option.

Disabling the messages automatically for all users is trickier. They come from BOINC Manager - which you don't need to run in service mode - but by default the Manager will run at logon for every user, until each user on each machine disables the "Run Manager at login?" option from their own account.

If the machines are part of a Domain, you might be able to turn off the autorun feature globally by deploying this registry key via group policy:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager]
"DisableAutoStart"=dword:00000001

Also, for a setup like this, I'd recommend setting up the tools for remote control as you do the installations, so that you can do minor maintenance centrally using tools like BoincTasks or even the venerable BoincView.

Wow.. that's a ton of info. thank you sir

:O

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David Anderson (private email) says that under these circumstances - service install, non-admistrative user logged in - the Manager shouldn't run at all (without going through all the hassle with DisableAutoStart or local Manager options), so your workers shouldn't see any notifications from it.

I'd check that out, before going in to the Group Policy arena.