On my sons machine I have SETI running on prefs which mean it only runs at night. However BOINC Manager keeps interupting his games and he is getting very annoyed. Why does it do this if prefs are set for it not to be running?

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Describe "interrupting his games" in more detail. What does it do? Slow down his games? Or crash them to the taskbar? What kind of games? On what spec computer?

Have you set the preferences for the BOINC projects so that the applications are pre-empted but staying in memory? If yes, how big is the page file that that computer can use at minimum and maximum?

Because games use the page file (swap file) a lot as well. If you are pre-empting the applications but leaving them in memory, they get stored in the page file, taking up room there.

And why can't he just exit BOINC when he plays games anyway? I think you can use the task scheduler to start up BOINC at a certain time.

Btw, I would check the settings of your second computer as the CPU isn't recognized (overclocked?) while those upload and download speeds are out of this world.

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The game is "Rome, Total War" and it was crashed to the taskbar. They are not set to stay in memory so it is not the page file giving problem - the point about my qustion is why is Boinc running? It is set to be OFF at that time. That PC is the AMD XP 3000+

My other PC is an AMD 2800+ and not overclocked, both share the same download pipe - 2 Meg ADSL.

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> about my qustion is why is Boinc running? It is set to be OFF at that time.

In order for BOINC to know when it should not crunch and when it should, it needs to be running ;) The setting is about when seti (and/or any project application) is allowed to crunch.

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Hi

I dont think its Boinc.
My son is playing games as well while running Boinc without any problems with AMD XP 2800+.
Boinc is running allways.
I testet it after i read this thread, played Doom 3 over an houre no problem at all.
Maybe its the game.

greetz Mike

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

it could be a graphics thing. Just for fun I set nView to make my system tray half transparent - but I notice that it changes from half transparent to fully visible as projects in boinc change from projects that hasn't a screensaver to projects that has - sometimes nView even displays a messages notifying me about this change. I think that even if a project is suspended, but the app still remains in memory it will still "use" the direct3d thing (actually I have no idea what I'm talking about here, just stating my observations ;))

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> (actually I have no idea what I'm talking about here, just stating my observations ;))

I noticed that, but weirdly enough I was thinking about something similar. Either a graphics card function interfering, or a screensaver trying to kick in, or something else trying to steal the focus, thus dumping the game to the taskbar. The game hasn't crashed and if all's well, pressing Alt+Tab will bring it right back up.

I've got BOINC running 24/7, even in the back with all my games and it doesn't interfere here. Okay, at times a slowdown, when a unit is done and the information is being sent back up. But even that doesn't dump my games to the task bar.

So Scribe, where is BOINC when your son starts playing a game? Sitting as an icon in the system tray (next to the clock), or is it fully opened up on the desktop? And why not let him exit BOINC before starting a game? It's a nice way of checking if it is BOINC that is causing the interference. For all you know it may be something completely different.

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> So Scribe, where is BOINC when your son starts playing a game? Sitting as an
> icon in the system tray (next to the clock), or is it fully opened up on the
> desktop? And why not let him exit BOINC before starting a game? It's a nice
> way of checking if it is BOINC that is causing the interference. For all you
> know it may be something completely different.

You may be experiencing something I have seen though my experinece does not lead to a crash, that is BOINC pops up the "balloon" when the mouse passes over the spot on the taskbar. And it does this when it should not because some other application has the whole window, but BOINC (or WxWidgets) does not seem to give that much thought...

So, if it happens when the mouse is in the lower right corner ... that is the problem ...

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But Paul, does that steal the focus? I've just tested it with two games, one D3D (NFS Underground 2) and one OpenGL (Deus Ex Invisible Wars). I know where the BOINC icon sits, but neither of the games lose the focus and thus dump themselves in the task bar.

One can also disable the balloon tips:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Advanced
3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.
5. Quit Registry Editor. Exit Windows and reboot.

This is funny though... I can't turn my tool tips, ballon tips and whatever else there is in the yellow things, off. I followed this as well:
To disable ToolTips:

1) Open the Registry Editor
2) Navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop.
3) Double-click UserPreferencemask and change its value to 3E 00 00 00.
4) Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows.

Didn't help.

I even disabled everything with tips in the registry and still these things pop up. My Windows must be doomed. ;)

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> But Paul, does that steal the focus? I've just tested it with two games, one
> D3D (NFS Underground 2) and one OpenGL (Deus Ex Invisible Wars). I know where
> the BOINC icon sits, but neither of the games lose the focus and thus dump
> themselves in the task bar.

Like Wizards, having to edit a registry with a text editor seems like an awfully poor way to have to change a computer's configuration.

There used to be a tag line about wizards being the best example of the failure of the GUI design ...

At any rate, I am not sure what is going on there, I just know that the game I was playing almost showed the balloon ... other games may lose the focus ... but we are guessing and that is why I asked if the symptom occurred when the mouse was triggering the balloon.

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As far as my son can remember, the mouse was not near the systray. Boinc runs 27/7 but seti (only project) prefs are from 2300 hrs to 0500 hrs only. The problem was about 2030 hrs.

He says screen went blank, 10 secs later normal Win XP screen appeared with the game (Rome) minimised on taskbar, as was Boinc, which it should not have been as it should only have been in systray at that time?

One thought I had was that in the general prefs switch between apps was 60 mins, even tho' there is only one app, so I wondered if Boinc was just checking? I have now set it to be 3000 minutes!

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Since you're running XP, have you tried to run BOINC as a service, and not start the BOINC Manager at all?

> He says screen went blank, 10 secs later normal Win XP screen appeared with
> the game (Rome) minimised on taskbar, as was Boinc, which it should not have
> been as it should only have been in systray at that time?

May I ask what kind of videocard you use in that computer?
If an Ati, please go to the display properties, settings, advanced, VPU Recover.
Now uncheck both options there, beginning with the bottom one!
Then press Apply, wait for the window to come back, then press OK until you're out of the display properties.

> One thought I had was that in the general prefs switch between apps was 60
> mins, even tho' there is only one app, so I wondered if Boinc was just
> checking? I have now set it to be 3000 minutes!

A bit of overkill going on there... If there's only one application to run (Seti), it can't switch every 2.08 days. ;)

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It is an ATI, what is the problem with it please?


There is no VPU Recover Tab/option listed under advance, what are the two items called you wish unchecked?

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You may be using the Ati Catalyst Control Center, so look in there. Make sure you use the Advanced View!

The VPU Recover option on the videocard can go haywire. VPU = Video Processing Unit (your GPU aka Graphics Processing Unit).

It's supposed to stop the game and dump you into Windows when something 'unforeseen' happens in the game, a memory address that can't be reached or a hitch in DirectX. In old times it would crash the game and Windows, needing a reboot. With VPU Rec. on it should crash the game only and dump you back to Windows. Trouble is, 9 out of 10 times you still have to reboot. ;)

Hence why I asked for this way of troubleshooting. You can ask your son if the Windows desktop at the time was looking like a brighter shinier version of itself than normal. If it was, it was the VPU Recover that kicked in and it was the game that crashed.

You can also check the Event Viewer (Start->Control Panel->(Classic View)-> Administrative Tools->Event Viewer, you need to be logged on as an administrator to do this), to see if anything else strange happened at that time. Any yellow or red markers in the System or Application logs.

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It seems ok now - must have been a one off!

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