I know people on this forum like to tackle Boinc questions, so here goes.

Half the time I reboot on my Windows XP system, Boinc doesn't startup with everything else. When I open it manually it opens fine but I get a popup error: "Failed to cleanup the Windows Socket Interface."

The other half of the time Boinc starts up just fine with no error.

Any ideas?

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I have also had that error, but it occurred once: Explorer (for reasons that I fail to comprehend) crashed and took the host down with it.

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MORE INFO WOULD HELP
OS?
BOINC VERSION?

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Fred
BOINC Alpha, BOINC Beta, LHC Alpha, Einstein Alpha

> MORE INFO WOULD HELP
> OS?
> BOINC VERSION?
>

I mentioned the OS was Windows XP :) Also, since this isn't on the Beta forums it's implied that I have the current released version of Boinc.

Thanks for your time.

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I'm not sure if the question was directed at me, but just in case it's Windows 2000 Pro with Service Pack 3, 256MB of allocated RAM and no page-swapping, and BOINC is version 4.1.3

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Well, now we know it's not an XP thing since it has happened on your 2k machine.

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> > MORE INFO WOULD HELP
> > OS?
> > BOINC VERSION?
> >
>
> I mentioned the OS was Windows XP :) Also, since this isn't on the Beta
> forums it's implied that I have the current released version of Boinc.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>

With the number of Alpha and Beta posts here nothing is implied.

Well, now we know it's not an XP thing since it has happened on your 2k machine.
It isn't a machine per se, but a Virtual PC v.6.1 environment. I'm 90% certain that Explorer's crash affected Windows's socket interface because that has been the only anomaly that has occurred in the last 40 hours.

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Well I don't even know what a Windows socket interface is. That's why I posted here :)

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You get an popup error: "Failed to cleanup the Windows Socket Interface." when you try to run a second boinc instance. Perhaps it couldn't shut down clearly the last time.

[EDIT] Just to make sure it closed look in task-manager[/EDIT]

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BOINC Doc | Team-Site | BOINC-Podcast

For now on I'll try exiting Boinc manually before rebooting, and I'll see if that clears up the issue.

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That makes sense - My environment crashed instead of shutting down, so there wasn't a chance to clean up.

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> You get an popup error: "Failed to cleanup the Windows Socket Interface." when
> you try to run a second boinc instance. Perhaps it couldn't shut down clearly
> the last time.
>
> [EDIT] Just to make sure it closed look in task-manager[/EDIT]
>

That's right. XP sometimes fails to show the icons of a running autostart program in the systray. Maybe BOINC was running but not showing it's icon. When you tried to start a second instance you got the socket error, cause the first (invisible) instance already occupied the socket. If it seems after startup BOINC isn't running take a closer look into the task manager searching for boinc_gui.exe.

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Aloha, Uli

One of the ways that this can occur is that you change users ... At home I never see this as I only have one active account on my PCs, but on my daughter's computer they all had their own accounts and as you switch between them you can see this error ...

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I used to get this from time to time... the BOINC icon in the system tray flashes on for a second when XP starts and then dissapears. It usually would return after about 10 seconds but not always. If the icon didn't return and I manually tried to launch BOINC i would get this socket error (due to 2 instances of the appliation running I presume).

I played around with the problem for a while and reckoned it had to be something to do with the amount of work XP is doing when it starts up ie starting services, launching apps etc. I noticed that uf I took BOINC out of the 'start up' group and manually started it once I logged in and XP had fully started (all icons in systray and no Hard Disk Activity) then it worked perfectly each time.


to solve the problem? Instead of putting the BOINC program into startup, I created a batch program which effectively sleeps for 30 seconds and then starts BOINC. I then put a shortcut to the batch program in startup instead of BOINC. This gives the PC more than enough time to get itself in order. Since doing this I have had no more problems with dissapearing systray icons or socket errors or anything like that.

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> One of the ways that this can occur is that you change users ... At home I
> never see this as I only have one active account on my PCs, but on my
> daughter's computer they all had their own accounts and as you switch between
> them you can see this error ...
>
I've seen it a copule of time at my XP Pro (single account) installation but never on a W2k Workstation or Server installation.

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Happy crunching