Hello,
I have been a contributor to BOINC for several years, donating many hours of CPU using the screen saver. And have not have had any problems.

But lately (past several weeks) I have an issue which I think is caused by the BOINC screen saver.

Issue:
When I “wake up” my PC, sometimes the BOINC program astropulse_6.08_windows_intelx86__cal_ati does not closedown, or remove itself from memory, and this seems to cause my PC to run unusually slow. All applications (Outlook, Firefox, Word, Excel, etc.,) react very slowly. (But this does not happen all of the time).

When there is an issue, I look to see what is running in memory (right-click the Task Bar and select Start Task Manager). And what I see, related to BOINC are these processes:

1. astropulse_6.08_windows_intelx86__cal_ati
2. setiathome_7.00_windows_intelx86
3. setiathome_7.00_windows_intelx86
4. setiathome_7.00_windows_intelx86
5. setiathome_7.00_windows_intelx86

When I kill (“end process”) this one - astropulse_6.08_windows_intelx86__cal_ati, all other apps (Word, Outlook, etc.) immediately begin running as normal, no delay or slowness. The other BOINC processes are still running, but my PC runs normally.

When the screen saver clears or ends properly, none of these 5 apps are running in memory (based on looking at the Task Manager).

BTW, I have set the option in “Computing Preferences” for “Computing allowed”. The “While Computer is in Use” box is unchecked. The “While processor usage is less than percent” box is set to “15”.

What is with the BOINC S/W that cause it NOT to remove itself from memory when I “wake up” my PC?

Thanks!
Jim

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When you say you are waking up your PC, are you waking up your monitors from a sleep state? Or are you waking up your PC itself from standby or hibernation?

If it is your PC that is waking up from standby or hibernation, this is a caused by a known conflict. If you plan to let your computer go to sleep or standby, you should change your preferences for:

"Suspend work if no mouse/keyboard activity in last
Needed to enter low-power mode on some computers"

To something like 2 minutes before you have your computer set to go into standby/hibernation. For example, if you have your computer go into sleep after 15 minutes of no activity, you should set this preference to 13 minutes so that BOINC can stop all crunching before it goes to sleep. This will allow the machine to come out of standby in a more graceful manner and will prevent the behavior you describe.

When you say you are waking up your PC, are you waking up your monitors from a sleep state? Or are you waking up your PC itself from standby or hibernation?

Answer: Waking up my PC form hibernation, which is set to hibernate at 5 minutes of inactivity.

Where is this parameter set?

"Suspend work if no mouse/keyboard activity in last
Needed to enter low-power mode on some computers"

I looked in "Tools>Computing Preferences>", but do not see this.

It's a global preference, set through your account's global preferences.

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