Seti is suddenly using 95%+ of my CPU, according to Task Manager (Win-XP/sp2). I'm sure it wasn't doing that before, because I was monitoring it for a while when another program went into meltdown and took over (about a month ago, which has since been fixed). Lately I'm getting programs crashing, or even disappearing with no warning.

It had been working fine for a while. I have had it set to contact the server every 3 days. Tonight I noticed the amount of CPU usage (I've been getting program crashes like crazy tonight!) So I tried reducing my Seti max CPU to 25% (from 40 or 50%, I think; I don't remember it being that high when I reduced it several weeks ago; could it have reset itself somehow??). I lowered it in my preferences on this site, rebooted, but it's still showing 95%+ using 15-16MB of 512MB RAM.

What gives?? Any ideas what the problem might be, and how to fix it? Should I upgrade to v4.25? How would I do that -- just download and install? Or should I uninstall 4.19 first? Would this even make any difference?

Thanks for any help you can give!

Starhugger

Thanks for any help you can give!

Get BOINCmeter and monitor if BOINC ramps down while other programs are Running..

http://home.wtnet.de/~akstiefler/seti/BOINCMeter.zip

It is not in english but you'll get the idea very Simple....




Starhugger</blockquote>

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Seti uses 100% of my 3 cpus no problem.....

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Semper Eadem
So long Paul, it has been a hell of a ride.

Park your ego's, fire up the computers, Science YES, Credits No.

Seti has always used 99%+ 0f my machine when nothing else is running, why should'nt it? Afterall, that is what it was designed to do!

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<blockquote>So I tried reducing my Seti max CPU to 25% (from 40 or 50%, I think; I don't remember it being that high when I reduced it several weeks ago; could it have reset itself somehow??). I lowered it in my preferences on this site, rebooted, but it's still showing 95%+ using 15-16MB of 512MB RAM.
</blockquote>

I think you are getting confused with resource share. It doesn't limit the amount of CPU usage. It relegates how much CPU time any given project gets if you are running multiple projects.

So setting your share at 25% doesn't mean that your CPU will be throttled at 25% usage, it means that S@H will get 25% of your processing time using BOINC. (assuming you're attached to another project)

Your CPU will be running at around 99% while BOINC is running. If you wish to run lower, do a search for threadmaster. I've never used it, but other forum members recommend it.

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Starhugger, might be thinking of the "Virtual Memory Percentage". This won't throttle down your CPU, like you think.

tony

Where ever it says SETI "Uses spare CPU cycles" it needs canging.

To: "Uses *ALL* spare CPU cycles" ;)

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Hmmm... Okay, it looks like I've been confused then. Thanks very much for all your replies about this. Thanks for the link Capt'n, but I can see from watching Task Manager while other things are running that S@h does indeed ramp down to make room for other programs. I have noticed some slowdown sometimes and have assumed that S@h was the culprit, and I'm still not 100% convinced that it's not part of the problem, but maybe not as much or in the way I thought.

Disk and memory usage
Use no more than 10 GB disk space
Leave at least 1.5 GB disk space free
Use no more than 30% of total disk space
Write to disk at most every 60 seconds
Use no more than 25% of total virtual memory

I guess I'm still confused about how the settings work though. I've copied my settings above. When it says "Use no more than 25% of total virtual memory" doesn't that mean that a certain percentage will always be idle? From what you all are saying, that's not the case, but the wording is confusing, if that's true. In fact (to the untrained eye), the settings seem rather redundant -- why have 3 different ways to say "Only use this much disk space or RAM"? Apparently there are differences between these that I don't understand or misunderstand.

Heffed, I have the resource share for S@h set to 100, since Seti is the only Boinc project I'm running right now. It's the Boinc computer usage I was concered about, in the settings above.

I'm running a new version of CorelDraw and it's becoming unstable and crashing, and I know it was a memory usage problem when I was using the trial version a few weeks ago. At that time I changed both its and Seti's numbers and it worked fine, so I'm assuming that's the problem now too.

Sigh... I wish there was one place where I could set all this stuff up where it makes sense to someone who isn't a card-carrying teckie. Is that asking too much??? LOL Apparently. ;-)

Thanks for all your help. :-)

Starhugger

Virtual Memory
copied from the web...
Most computers today have something like [256] to [512] megabytes of RAM available for the CPU to use. Unfortunately, that amount of RAM is not enough to run all of the programs that most users expect to run at once.

For example, if you load the operating system, an e-mail program, a Web browser and word processor into RAM simultaneously, [256] megabytes may not be enough to hold it all. If there were no such thing as virtual memory, then once you filled up the available RAM your computer would have to say, "Sorry, you can not load any more applications. Please close another application to load a new one." With virtual memory, what the computer can do is look at RAM for areas that have not been used recently and copy them onto the hard disk. This frees up space in RAM to load the new application.
end copy

Corel is a resource hog (one of the biggest I've seen, 512MB may not be enough RAM), installing the full version may require more RAM and virtual memory than you have to contain the active programs. One fix may be to increase the size of either you RAM or your virtual memory.

You should know how to increase your amount of RAM, what you may not know is how to increase the size of you virtual memory. In linux this is your swap drive, but your profile only lists WinXP SP2.

To increase your virtual memory in WinXP

<li>Right-Click on My Computer</li>
<li>Select the Advanced tab</li>
<li>Select Performance Settings (first item)</li>
<li>Select the Advanced tab</li>
<li>Select Virtual Memory Change (last item)</li>

Here you can change your "Page File Size" (ie virtual memory) for each drive. Generally speaking, selecting System managed size is best but you can always select Custom size: and tinker with the settings.

Disclaimer: Be very careful what you do here. If you are uncomfortable with changing these settings my advice is... Don't do it!

Disk Usage
Your disk usage settings are independant of each other. Think of them as a set of rules. For instance, mine are:

Use no more than GB disk space
Leave at least GB disk space free
Use no more than 25% of total disk space

See how I left two blank? BOINC will just ignore those two and only use my percentage for it's rules. [By the way, it has been my experience that if you set a value for "use no more than", BOINC will allocate that total amount whether you use it or not.]

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7,049 S@H Classic Credits

Hi Ampoliros,

Thanks so much for your help! I saw that my opsys was set to a specific/custom amount of virtual RAM (which was only the minimum recommended), so I changed it to system recommended. We'll see how it goes.

I had already changed Corel to use a higher percentage of resources and it has been a bit stabler (crossing fingers). I've been thinking lately of increasing the RAM, although my tech guy thought 512MB should be enough, but I do like to load up a lot of programs at once, plus Seti, so it may be causing a logjam in the disk swapping.

Thanks also for the info about the Boinc settings. I'm going to wait and see how my 'puter runs with the new virtual RAM setting, and then try tinkering with the Boinc settings. If something goes weird, I want to know where it's coming from! ;-)

Thanks again.

Starhugger

<blockquote>Hi Ampoliros,
I had already changed Corel to use a higher percentage of resources and it has been a bit stabler (crossing fingers). I've been thinking lately of increasing the RAM, although my tech guy thought 512MB should be enough, but I do like to load up a lot of programs at once, plus Seti, so it may be causing a logjam in the disk swapping.</blockquote>
I haven't used Corel for years, but it has always been a memory pig. It doesn't matter how much you have, it wants more.
WinXP is generally happy with 512MB, but it's much happier with 1GB- especially when runing several applications at the same time.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Another thing to consider is that windows constantly resizes the page file even when not being used (stupid windows) which uses up clock cycles. Therfore I lock mine at 1024 meg (1gig) which is more than enough for my needs since I will seldom use all my physical memory. You may want to adjust higher or lower depending on the apps you run.

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98SE XP2500+ @ 2.1 GHz Boinc v5.8.8

And God said"Let there be light."But then the program crashed because he was trying to access the 'light' property of a NULL universe pointer.

Another thing you should consider is running an spyware removal programs. Certain spyware can run in the background and leech off of your system resources. Download something like "Adaware", do like a google search to find the website. Also make sure yor system is virus-free, as some viruses use up resources like crazy. You also mentioned something about programs quitting W/O warning, and that "sounds" like a virus, but it could just be from too much stuff running at once.

If Adaware removal and virus scrubbing doesn't work, then definately increase the RAM you have. I have 512MB or RAM but programs like corel can use up more than half of your physical ram easily, and then use up more than 500MB of virtual ram, depending on what you are doing.

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-ChaoticBlue
<img border="0" src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats.php?userID=996&amp;trans=off" />

Very weird behaviour on this message board tonight (not with others I've been to today). It doesn't seem to want to wordwrap and I have to scroll way over, yet the ltr scroll button doesn't move. Oh well, I'm assuming it is a temporary glitch and will be fixed soon enough.

Thank you Grant, Steve and Blue, for your suggestions. I am actually very vigilant about updating and running both antivirus and antispyware: PC-cillin updates every 3 hours and scans every 24; and I run AdAware and Spybot every couple of days. So it's not that. That is the first thing I check when this kind of stuff happens.

I suspect it's the Corel in combination with everything else. My system has been stabler since I let Windows figure out how bit a bite of the apple it wants. Although, occasionally Corel-12 starts to lose the screen visuals, which in v.9 was a sure sign it was about to crash. So far it hasn't. But I think I'd better upgrade the memory as soon as I can free up some money for it.

Thanks again for your helps! :-)

Starhugger

I thought I'd give an update. Since I set my RAM usage to be decided by the System, rather than hardcoding the amount, it has been running fine. (knock wood) so that seems to have done the trick. Just thought I'd report back, in case any lurkers out there are having the same problem. :-)

Thanks again for all your help!

Starhugger