Anyone else have this problem ? When my SETI@home is running, a great many other applications are adversely affected. By Firefox browser is constantly adjusting itself and scrolling up or down a few lines, making it very difficult to read things, as are any MS Word documents. I happened to try an old game (Recoil) and found it is unplayable anymore, due to the graphics shuddering and vibrating if I so much as touch the mouse. If I suspend SETI, the scrolling stops, and Recoil works once more.

Do you have integrated video, by chance? Or are you using a separate (AGP, PCI or PCI-E) videocard?

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I have a separate video card. Not sure which one, but I can try to find out, if necessary.

That would be nice. Use Dxdiag.

Start->Run, type dxdiag, hit Enter.

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NVIDIA Vanta, with 16 MB. ANything else you need ?

This happens only when Seti is running in BOINC? (A weird way of asking if you run any other projects and if you see the same thing happening there ;))

Could you run Seti for me, plus open Firefox on any page, plus whatever else you need to reproduce this and then check in Task Manager (rightclick on the Windows Task bar, choose Task Manager from the pop-up menu), in the Processes tab what is taking up CPU?

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This is a drop-dead show stopper. I have now tried FOUR times to respond, and three times the scolling problem cause me to lose my work. The first time, I was about to hit SEND and the screen jumped up about a half inch, and instead my "click" landed on the message number link. That meant I lost all my typing. The second response, I was almost finished when the typing area scrolled off screen (up) and the next thing I knew, my reply page had been replaced by your last message. I tried a third time, and this same thing happened again. I have now suspended all BOINC SETI stuff so I can get this bug report completed.

Task Manager says I have Firefox using about 106 K. Seti was (until I suspended it) using aboutn 61 K. Anything else you need ?

If we can't find a solution, I will have to shut down my SETI permanently. The damage it causes is far too great.

Task Manager says I have Firefox using about 106 K. Seti was (until I suspended it) using aboutn 61 K. Anything else you need ?

If we can't find a solution, I will have to shut down my SETI permanently. The damage it causes is far too great.

I was looking for what was taking up CPU cycles. It's usually in percentages, although it doesn't show the % mark. You can type it in Notepad for the moment, then suspend BOINC again before you type something here. Or make a screenshot of the Task Manager window and post that if you have access to a site like Photobucket.

If Firefox takes up only 106KB, it's a good program. (It's 106.000K, meaning around 105MB) :-)

OK, I know you're using BOINC 5.4.11
I need to know which Firefox version you use.
Which DirectX version.
Videocard drivers version.

And then I'll put all of that in an email to one of the developers and let him try to make cheese of it. In my opinion, it is something that needs to be fixed.

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DirectX is 9.0c

Video driver is nv4_disp.dll version 6.14.0010.5303 English, dated 17/11/2003

Firefox is 1.5.0.6

I don't have access to Photobucket (it will not accept me) plus I am reluctant
to post info like Task Manager on a public site. I will send it to an e-mail
if that is OK. How do people get their stats on the message board notes ?

BTW I find it curious that I can SUSPEND any one of the SETI
tasks, but I cannot RESUME that task. I can Abort it
completely, but when I Resume it simply starts a new
task, and leaves the suspended one(s) there, perhaps for
ever.

Is this enough detail ?

I will send it to an e-mail if that is OK.

elst93 at gmail dot com

How do people get their stats on the message board notes ?

You mean in the signatures? Check out Mundayweb for one.

BTW I find it curious that I can SUSPEND any one of the SETI
tasks, but I cannot RESUME that task.

The Suspend button changes into a Resume button. You have to select the result again and press the Resume button. The button shows what option you have, not what state it is in.

I can Abort it completely, but when I Resume it simply starts a new
task, and leaves the suspended one(s) there, perhaps for ever.

Aborting the result means you don't want to crunch it anymore. It will then stop crunching that one, send to Seti that you aborted it and start to crunch the next one.

If you want to suspend in an easier manner, open Boinc Manager, go to the Activity menu, and select Suspend from there. That will suspend all activity. Afterwards you can go back and set it back on Run based on preferences.

One last thing you may want to try to fix this, without developer involvement:
Go to Your Account, then on to General preferences, select the edit button at the bottom.

Now scroll to "On multiprocessors, use at most" and set it to 1.
Save the settings with the Update preferences button at the bottom.

Open Boinc Manager.
Projects tab.
Select Seti@Home.
Press Update.
Check in the Messages tab if your preferences changed. When it has done so, exit BOINC (File->Exit).
Restart BOINC (Probably Start->Programs->Boinc, choose Boinc Manager.

Resume all running results. Test if you still have problems.

If you do not, then it is possible your system doesn't like it when BOINC uses both your CPUs. Your P4 2.8GHz is only one CPU, but it does Hyperthreading. Which means you have one extra virtual CPU.

With telling BOINC you only want it to use one CPU, you crunch only one result at a time, leaving the other CPU to work with the other programs.

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I already have my preferences set to "just one processor". I sent a PPT file of
the screen capture of my Task Manager. I hate MS PowerPoint. Freelance is SO
much easier for this sort of thing.

When I try to Resume a task, it does NOT start up again, at least immediately.
Even 5 minutes later, it has not resumed. Maybe on the next Update cycle it will.

I already have my preferences set to "just one processor".

But did you update BOINC afterwards so it knows this as well? According to your computer, you either didn't save that preference to the site or updated BOINC so it could communicate this.

Number of CPUs 2

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I can't find where to change the NUMBER of CPU's from 2 to 1. And I looked very carefully, but did not find an EDIT function for this value. I did not even enter it, myself, so it must have been derived automagically.

I can't find where to change the NUMBER of CPU's from 2 to 1. And I looked very carefully, but did not find an EDIT function for this value. I did not even enter it, myself, so it must have been derived automagically.

1. Your Account

2. General Preferences

3. Edit Preferences (At the bottom of that page.)

NVIDIA Vanta, with 16 MB. ANything else you need ?

Your graphics card is a bit underpowered to run the new OpenGL screen saver in SETI@Home. Once the screen saver kicks in, I'm sure it's well overtaxed trying to even get the graphics on the screen.

Then, you move the mouse and BOINC thinks there is user activity (because there is, in fact, user activity if you're moving your mouse) and cuts off the screen saver before the screen saver actually goes down, giving you the message that BOINC is suspended.

As for your old game, SETI@Home has been known to have some problems playing games (old or new, as I've seen stuttering on perfectly powerful hardware while playing The Sims 2). It might be best to suspend BOINC/SETI while playing games.


One potential solution is to upgrade your graphics driver to see if that helps performance. Otherwise, disabling the screen saver is your best bet. Crunching without the screen saver will net you more work anyway.

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OK, I am NOT running the SETI graphics pane, as I found the clarity lacking, at 1280 by 1024. So I am not sure how it can affect graphically intensive games. I will try to locate a newer driver.

Also, Stumpy, when I try MY ACCOUNT in the left side list of BOINC, there is NO General Preferences listed. When I click on YOUR ACCOUNT at the line across the top, I do see General Preferences, but this page does not list the number of porcessors I have, only the number I wish to run, which continues to be set to "1".

Then it may be saved at your preferences on the Seti website, but BOINC on your computer doesn't know about this preference change yet. So you have to Update BOINC.

Open BOINC Manager
Projects tab
Select Seti
Press Update.

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I found a newer version of nv4_disp.dll opn my own PC, and copied it into the areas where the older version was. Recoil seems to work fine now, and the web pages seem to be fine as well. Thanks a bunch for all the help. Back to number crunching....

Hmm. I spoke too soon. The Recoil game now works fine (probably the newer driver) but I still have some screen scrolling that is neither planned nor desired. I may try some other things like moving my mouse to a different port.

It coubld be your video card does not support the latest APIs being used by BOINC and/or SETI. Looking at the NVidia site, it is an old card. Found the following in FAQ:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_20010528_6926.html

Going by the above, what I suspect is happening is the the hardware on the card can not handle the request being given to it by SETI, so it is switching to software rendering, which is slow. Ozzfan posted about the new OpenGL being used. The hardware on the card more than likely can not handle it, so it is using software rendering.

To put software rendering verus hardware in perspective. I used to have a video card that would switch to software rendering whenever it could not reset from a hardware error. When this happened you could see the screen being updated.

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SL