lenette, Skype also has a text version which is immediate, it's right below the chat option to reach me.

Any way, you say there is no "boinc manager" in the startup tab of msconfig?

for those following along, lenette has told me Boinc starts on it's own. I had her check the "services" and Boinc is NOT listed. At one point she thought she saw two B's in the systray. We're carrying the conversation here, because her mic is messing up/cutting out.

i'm running norton antivirus 2005, but just ordered (on ebay at half of cost of symantec) 2007 on CD. didn't want to take the chance of downloading it and then needing to reinstall - had that before, ain't doing it again.

Lenette

Your system does not meet the requirements set by Norton:

Norton AntiVirus 2007 System Requirements Norton AntiVirus 2007Platforms: Windows® XP Home/XP Pro

Eligible for a free Windows Vista™ compatibility update† Windows XP Home / XP Professional300MHz or higher processor
256MB of RAM
180MB of available hard disk space

It's starved and begging for more memory.

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hmm which version of boinc are you using?
5.6.x and above have a cpu throttle feature.

But that would affect all BOINC projects, wouldn’t it? And AIUI it wouldn’t reduce the CPU percentage as described; if it were set to 8% usage you’d see the science apps alternate between getting (nearly) 100% for a minute and then 0% for the next eleven minutes or so.

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for those following along, lenette has told me Boinc starts on it's own. I had her check the "services" and Boinc is NOT listed. At one point she thought she saw two B's in the systray. We're carrying the conversation here, because her mic is messing up/cutting out.

Is Lenette running Folding and SETI and Norton on a box with 128MG?
...with shared video perhaps....

for those following along, lenette has told me Boinc starts on it's own. I had her check the "services" and Boinc is NOT listed. At one point she thought she saw two B's in the systray. We're carrying the conversation here, because her mic is messing up/cutting out.

Is Lenette running Folding and SETI and Norton on a box with 128MG?
...with shared video perhaps....

OMG!... If so that will be quite a strangled thrash!

Also, does not Folding steal most of the CPU idle time away from Boinc?

To find out what runs at startup from all the "secret" startup locations hidden in Windows, try "Silent Runners". Its a very useful utility to list all the startup stuff.


Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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How ON EARTH is your computer even running windows XP with 128mb of ram? When I turn my computer on it uses 900Mb immediately and I dont even have Norton!

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How ON EARTH is your computer even running windows XP with 128mb of ram? When I turn my computer on it uses 900Mb immediately and I dont even have Norton!

Perhaps it is not on Earth? ;-)

And with a 900MByte overhead... perhaps you should try something somewhat more lean and mean? Phew! That is some BLOAT even by Windows (non-)standards!!!

:-(
Martin

(Some Linux distros still support 64MBytes (and smaller!) systems...)

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
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"YIPES" is right --

My XP machine only utilizes about 360megs for everything (including anti-virus and firewall). BOINC adds more, but I would be very suspect about a system that required 900+megs for Windows alone ....

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"YIPES" is right --

My XP machine only utilizes about 360megs for everything (including anti-virus and firewall). BOINC adds more, but I would be very suspect about a system that required 900+megs for Windows alone ....

I'm running XP pro & crunching on a machine with only 96mb RAM, a PII-300. Takes about 2 days to complete a WU and about 10 minutes to boot, but it works.

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Calm Chaos Forum...Join Calm Chaos Now

GEE GUYS, I feel so....IMPOTENT with my itty bitty machine.

i'll try to address everyone's remarks in order:

1. ASTRO - i think i was mistaken about two BOINCs in the system tray. however, you are correct - i did say boinc mgr is NOT in startup in msconfig.

2. DRYHEAT - thanks for the headsup re: norton 2007. every time i talk to emachines they try to sell me more memory, but i've always dismissed it as a marketing ploy. i guess the joke's on me, huh? how come i'm not laughing?

3. what version?- i just downloaded the latest version yesterday, which is when things REALLY got interesting. it was after that that SETI started running by itself. in addition, when i decided to change some preferences and clicked on the button, the program went WILD. in opened in FOUR windows, two new ones, and requisitioned the two i alread had open. it might have even opened more than four - i felt like i was on one of those porn sites where every time i clicked 'close' on a window, another one opened. can anyone explain this?

4.ODYSSEUS - that's very interesting about the throttle. when it was running properly last night it bounced between 0 and 100% cpu. is that what you mean?

5. ML1 - i do NOT run SETI & folding & norton at the same time - at least not any more. i WISH SETI was as problem-free as folding, as it never has any probs. but yeah, it'll knock SETI right out of business if i run them both. so now i just run one or the other. and the last two days i've been disabling norton as well, which i thought was helping, but now i don't know.

ok, now that i've gotten the old biz out of the way, everyone's gonna love what SETI is doing now...

1. Late last night (after midnite), when i finally got done, i restarted BOINC and SETI. then, since i had suspended all NINE jobs (that was another 'bug' - now every time i suspend all jobs, as i had always done with the previous version, SETI downloads more work like crazy.) anyway, i resumed the first-to-finish job, and while it SOUNDED like it was running (all that grinding and groaning the cpu makes), the job showed NO PROGRESS. I had seen some other posts by users that seemed to be having the same prob, so i suspended that job and started another. then everything seemed ok. i tried a couple others and they seemed to run OK also, so i figured maybe just the 12/19 job was messed up somehow.

well, this morning i was happy to see only 7 jobs in queue so i thought we were ok. but when i looked at the stats i saw that again the job running was not making any progress. then when i suspended it and tried some others, NONE of them showed any progress.

i ran a search on *BOINC* in case i had two versions running but everything looks ok. i have no duplicate files.

SO DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY OTHER IDEAS? this thing has developed a life of its own, and i'm not having fun with this. should i uninstall as ASTRO suggests? and if so, do i need to abort the unfinished jobs first?

i'm sorry to ask so many questions, and everyone has been awfully helpful, so thanks to all, as usual,

lenette

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Intelligence is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage

well, this morning i was happy to see only 7 jobs in queue so i thought we were ok. but when i looked at the stats i saw that again the job running was not making any progress. then when i suspended it and tried some others, NONE of them showed any progress.

What makes you think that no progress was being made? What were you actually looking at and seeing?

What settings have you got for s@h on Boinc?

If you go to your account settings on the s@h website, have you got "run always" and "keep in memory" set?

Are you also running a 'screen saver'?

Happy crunchin',
Martin

[edit] Importantly: Is your PC clock/time always showing the correct time? [/edit]

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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Martin -

I was looking at the TASKS tab in BOINC mgr. CPU time and PROGRESS change by only a TINY amount (seconds, or hundreths/sec), if at all. also windows' task manager shows 0% CPU usage for SETI, even while memory usage is constantly changing (avg. around 10,000k)

RUN ALWAYS i changed to NO
KEEP IN MEMORY is also NO by default
i have a windows screen saver set to come on after 10 min of inactivity.
YES my clock always shows the correct time/runs properly

currently i have one window open (this one), and nothing else open (norton is disabled) except task mgr, search results, and notepad

L
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

What makes you think that no progress was being made? What were you actually looking at and seeing?

What settings have you got for s@h on Boinc?

If you go to your account settings on the s@h website, have you got "run always" and "keep in memory" set?

Are you also running a 'screen saver'?

Happy crunchin',
Martin

[edit] Importantly: Is your PC clock/time always showing the correct time? [/edit][/quote]

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Intelligence is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage

ONE good thing - all jobs are suspended and SETI hasn't downloaded any more work...

by the way, how much memory should i upgrade to? and where's the best place to buy it? i have a sneaky suspicioun that emachines is not it.

and does anyone live near corona CA, to help me install it? (can't hurt to ask, right?) i physically cannot do it myself.

L

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Intelligence is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage

ALSO -

when FOLDING runs (and at 100% or damn close), it has no problems AND it does not interfere with anything else i'm trying to do.

when i run SETI any more, not only does it NOT run anywhere near 100%, i cannot do ANYTHING else unless i suspend all jobs. if a job is running it totally degrades my system, and brings everything to a virtual standstill. i don't understand it. is this how it's supposed to work? i can't believe it. if i can't find someone to install more memory, i may have to give SETI up and stay with apps that behave themselves...

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Intelligence is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage

Martin -

I was looking at the TASKS tab in BOINC mgr. CPU time and PROGRESS change by only a TINY amount (seconds, or hundreths/sec), if at all. also windows' task manager shows 0% CPU usage for SETI, even while memory usage is constantly changing (avg. around 10,000k)

RUN ALWAYS i changed to NO
KEEP IN MEMORY is also NO by default
i have a windows screen saver set to come on after 10 min of inactivity.

currently i have one window open (this one), and nothing else running (norton is disabled) except task mgr, search results, and notepad...

OK, best is to at least have "KEEP IN MEMORY" set to "yes", otherwise you can lose a lot of progress.

And with "RUN ALWAYS" set to no, Boinc is completely correct in doing nothing while you are tickling the keys on your computer! There must be a few minutes of inactivity before Boinc starts up again. Then, as soon as you touch your mouse or keyboard, Boinc goes back to 'sleep' until your machine is untouched and idle oncemore.

With "RUN ALWAYS" set to yes, then you should always see at least some progress... Unless...

With just 128MBytes of RAM already swamped by MS-software bloat, your machine will be waiting a lot of the time while it swaps its meagre memory out to your HDD and back again to try to work with the memory needed for s@h. CPU utilisation will be a lot less than 100% while doing this, and easily as low as just a few %! (It's listed in the task manager as "page faults" or "paging".)


You can add more memory so that the very slow memory to disk swapping isn't needed.

Or you could run Boinc with nothing else running.

(Or if adventurous, use a small footprint Linux distro to run Boinc. :-) )


Easiest is to add another 128MBytes or more of RAM, or to use "RUN ALWAYS" set to no and accept no progress while you are on the machine.

Also, set your screen saver to be just "blank screen" rather than use memory and CPU for fancy graphics.

Hope that helps,

Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

ONE good thing - all jobs are suspended and SETI hasn't downloaded any more work...

by the way, how much memory should i upgrade to? and where's the best place to buy it? i have a sneaky suspicioun that emachines is not it.

and does anyone live near corona CA, to help me install it? (can't hurt to ask, right?) i physically cannot do it myself.

L

Actually, I would say that of all computer upgrades, fitting more RAM is the quickest, easiest, cheapest and most effective of all: usually the hardest part is getting all eight edges of the case to line up at the same time when you're trying to put it all back togther again! It's quite close to being a do-it-yourself job, but still - always best to have someone else around to blame if it all goes wrong!

CA is a bit far to travel from UK, but I hope you find someone local to lend a hand. It would be best to plan on two separate sessions - the first to check exactly what your machine has at the moment, and what it's capable of using (i.e. check the specifications of the motherboard): only then do you actually go shopping, and make a separate appointment to fit the goodies. Saves time in the long run.

damn!

thanks Martin, i'm sure that ultimately the problem is not enough memory. i had a more complete answer which responded to your remarks, but i wanted to check to see if BOINC was going to hijack my machine again like it did last nite, when i clicked preferences. i'm happy to report that it did not. i'm unhappy to report that it deleted everything i had typed here.

hey richard -

what if i pay for your ticket to fly over here? you talk as if i would have the foggiest idea of how to check the motherboard. i don't even know where it is. and i have no geek friends who know either. believe or not, I'M the geekiest. which means i know how to install hardware and plug components in correctly. WHEE.

i have a feeling it would be cheaper to fly you out than to call Geek Squad or some other outfit. and then god only knows how knowledgeable the 'geek' they send out really is...

you know, the chinese have a curse that goes 'may you lead an interesting life'. describes me to a 'T', unfortunately.

anyway, thanks to everyone who chipped in with ideas and help. i'm just gonna hope for the best - i'm sick of the whole thing and i'm sure everyone else is by now too.

Lenette

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Intelligence is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage

How ON EARTH is your computer even running windows XP with 128mb of ram? When I turn my computer on it uses 900Mb immediately and I dont even have Norton!

Perhaps it is not on Earth? ;-)

And with a 900MByte overhead... perhaps you should try something somewhat more lean and mean? Phew! That is some BLOAT even by Windows (non-)standards!!!

:-(
Martin

(Some Linux distros still support 64MBytes (and smaller!) systems...)

Well, there are other things that go on, I didnt mean "just" windows I guess. I meant that when the computer boots up and I log on (This includes Boinc), between windows and all the background processes that activate it really does use anywhere from 700Mb to 1Gb of ram. Im not sure what its doing exactly but there are some 70 processes in the task manager. I always been curious about exactly what they are but i dont think they are viruses. I know a lot of them come from the whole media center thing, but otherwise i really dont know. The computers fine though becausse it has 2gb of ram so i dont mind letting everything go about its business.

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... Im not sure what its doing exactly but there are some 70 processes in the task manager. I always been curious about exactly what they are but i dont think they are viruses...

There are some whom consider that Windows itself is a virus... :-P


;-)
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)