Hello, I ma new to Seti@home. I am having a problem. One of my tasks has the GPU missing tag on it and it is suspended. I have seen that there have been problems in the past BUT I am not a techie or know what even gpu means. I am also having a problem with my graphics. Every so often the blank screen is replaced by the 4 task showing that they are running BUT the graphic that shows the graph is no longer working. My graphic card is a NVIDIA nForce10/100 mbps Ethernet. Again, I am not well versed on the insides of my computer. If you answer me, please use "English" as they say on TV when they don't understand. Most of the gpu posts I have looked at are well over my head. I see that the 4 tasks are running from the BOINC Manager but that one is not. HELP please! Thx a lot Fred W Blackwood NJ

My graphic card is a NVIDIA nForce10/100 mbps Ethernet.

That's your network controller, the nForce series being rather old from memory.

Looking at your computer info, your video card is a GeForce 9100, from memory that's an onboard graphics chipset.

What video driver version are you using?
Right click on the desktop, Click on Nvidia control Panel (if it is there). On the home page (in small print) it will have the version (mine is 344.11- yours will probably be low 100s or low 200s).

If no Nvidia control panel, click on Screen Resolution, Advanced Settings, on the Adaptor tab- Properties, on the Driver tab look at the driver version number.

Mine is 9.18.13.4411
Taking the last 5 digits gives the actual version number 344.11

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Grant
Darwin NT

Thank you I had no idea about what you are saying. My computer is about 6 years old and has been rebooted several times. This time I had 2 viruses and a lot of Malware. It was a mess.

My version from the Screen Resolution/Driver tab is 8.15.11.9038 so I guess that makes mine a 190.38. A lot lower than yours. Does that mean I should upgrade my video card or just get a new computer?

Darwin NT? Is NT a state in Australia? I have several FB friends from down under and I follow the AFL Geelong Cats and have a few friends who are also fans. We used to get it on Mondays on a 3rd Public station but the AFL sold out to Direct TV and now I do not get it. I liked it a lot.

Can you help me? Thx

A quick sanity check on your system - there are no driver reported. Windows will probably get around this by using the default VGA driver. SETI however does need the drivers to be in and working.
For your system I would guess that the most appropriate driver would be 320.49.
Use this link http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-uk and select the version of windows, graphics card, then scroll down the list of drivers until you find 320.49, download it, and run the installer - do a "CLEAN" update (I think you find it under "advanced", and look for a small tick box), there may be a few blank screens and re-boots - some of the blanks can be scarily long...

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

My version from the Screen Resolution/Driver tab is 8.15.11.9038 so I guess that makes mine a 190.38. A lot lower than yours.

If you do as Rob suggested and upgrade the driver to a more recent version (275 or better should do it, I think 334 or so is as high as you can go) that should get the video card back as being usable by Seti.

Does that mean I should upgrade my video card or just get a new computer?

I'd suggest that even if you do get the video card running it won't produce much work; it is very old (graphics wise) and even when it came out was designed for mobile systems- very low performance even by the standards at that time.
If you have a spare PCIe *16 slot, and your PSU (Power Supply Unit) is 400W or better, adding a GTX750/GTX750Ti would make a massive improvement in crunching ability.
If you don't have the spare PCIe slot, or the PSU is less than 400W I'd suggest saving up for a more modern system.

Darwin NT? Is NT a state in Australia?

Yep, The Northern Territory, Australia.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I will check out getting then ew driver. There is something I didn't mention. The graphics work on my wife's side of our computer where on my side I only get that graphic with the line graph telling how far along the project is. Let me see what the new driver will do. Thx Fred

Thank you Bob. I will try that for now. I believe that we will need a better computer for the best work in SETI. Thx Fred

Bob, I looked up that webpage. I know that it is GeForce from Grant. BUT I do not know the product series or the product. Grant suggested I was a GeForce 9100. The product series only goes up to 900. Plus I do not know the product. I tried through the Device Manager to see if I can find all of this. It shows I have an nForce. The version is 73.1.4.0. With this I still couldn't find the GeForce number or the series or the product. Help. Thx Fred

Most people don't actually run it as a screen saver these days, as that actually slows the crunching down. They just set it to run all the time using the Web based preferences.

Click on Account on the top or bottom of the page (enter your username & password if necessary, select "Remember me" to save doing it each time to go to your account), under Preferences click on Computing preferences, down the bottom of the page, click on Edit preferences.
Then back at the top of the page under Usage Limits set Use at most xx of the CPUs and Use at most xxx of CPU time both to 100%.

There are other things that can be done to improve performance, but I'd suggest getting things setup & working ok as they are before worrying about any of them.



If you're running 2 different user accounts on the computer, someone else will hopefully be along that can suggest the best installation option for BOINC for multiple user accounts.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Bob, I looked up that webpage. I know that it is GeForce from Grant. BUT I do not know the product series or the product. Grant suggested I was a GeForce 9100. The product series only goes up to 900.

The GeForce 9100 is part of the GeForce 9 series.

GeForce 314.22 driver for Win7,8 & Vista, 64bit
Click on the green Download button to download the driver.
If you click on supported products, almost at the bottom is the GeForce9 series, and at the very end is your 9100 listed.

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Grant
Darwin NT

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html

They say that 340.xx will work with a 9100, but will 340 work with BIONC?
It wouldn't on my 750.

I'm curious ... in your "wifes side" (different logins??) Open BOINC Manager and see what messages you see in the event log, and compare to what you see on your login.

This is how Seti see your computer:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?userid=10224602

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http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html

They say that 340.xx will work with a 9100, but will 340 work with BIONC?
It wouldn't on my 750.

The GeForce 9100 is a very old chipset for mobile systems that was used as integrated graphics on some desktop systems.
I was running a GTX460 & 560Ti with 275 or so drivers, I had to upgrade to the latest release drivers when I got my GTX 750Tis. The old drivers not only didn't know of the latest video card, they didn't have the functionality to drive it. Hence the need for the latest & greatest (at the time). Were I to upgrade to a GTX950, 980 etc then I would need more a recent driver than my current one in order for them to work.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Fred I would advise you to get a new Graphic's card as that one you have only has 256meg of ram and you will have trouble running , seeing as your a neewbee it would be much better you just get a better Graphic card (GPU)

You can get cheap ones on ebay if you don't wish to spend $200 (ozzie ) on a card

A nvida 4 series or above will do and min ram on it should be 1 gig but 512 meg will also do just don't get something with 256meg it's just not going to cut it .

Edit: oh yes your right Darwin is in N.T however when talking I.T parlay it "Darwin" normally refers to the MACITOSH or Apple computers operating system and N.T refers to Windows Networking operating System

Not Darwin the Capital of the Northern Territory in Australia :-)

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Our BOINC Managers are TOTALLY different. Hers is oblong with one task showing. Mine is a rectangle without the sme graphics she had and had different commands. You could see the graphics from a link on the bottom of the box. All mine can do is update the project and show the working and all tasks. I have no graphics at all like hers.

I also couldn't find that generation of video card on nVidia. They were all 358 and higher. Man do I need help. The tasks appear to be working on her side but how do I know they do not stop if I use my browser or look at my email which happens a lot on my side.

It is looking like I need a better graphics card. BUT I do not know if it will work in my ancient computer.

All you guys are really using terms that I am not familiar with. Sorry. I am old at 63 and my brain does not work as well as it should. I see the tasks performing when I have MY manager open and it tells me which are working or waiting to be worked. I now have TWO GPU tasks not running. And I just had this computer into the shop before I started SETI@Home getting 2 viruses taken out. If I knew, I would have had them install a newer one. But it takes so long to get it back with all the computers they fix. My short term computer whiz went out of business. Yuck

Our BOINC Managers are TOTALLY different.

Wild guess; on yours with the manager open, click on View, then Advanced view.

The tasks appear to be working on her side but how do I know they do not stop if I use my browser or look at my email which happens a lot on my side.

I still don't understand what you mean by "Her side and my side". When each of you use the computer, do you each use a different name & password to log on to the computer?
In my previous post I mentioned about the web based preferences. If it is set there to continue working, it will.
However, I don't know what options you used to install BOINC and how they affect it's operation if you have different user logons for the computer.

It is looking like I need a better graphics card. BUT I do not know if it will work in my ancient computer.

To do more than a bit of work, yes.
As long as you have a PCIe *16 slot, and your PSU (Power Supply Unit) is rated at 400W you could add a GTX 750Ti card with no problems, other than having to use a more recent video driver. Even with a 300W PSU than a GTX 750 would be the best option.

If you had to replace your PSU as well as buy the video card, given the age of the computer I wouldn't bother. I'd put the money towards a new system.

PCIe slots, very large image.
http://www.playtool.com/pages/vidslots/mballslots.jpg

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Grant
Darwin NT

OK, let's take this one step at a time.

To see what graphics card you have:
On the SETI@Home "Home" page click on "account", then "view" alongside "Computers on this account". You will see a table, one column in there shows you the graphics card (GPU) that you are using, and if you had a "proper" driver installed it would also show the driver version in that box.

Now to get the "proper" driver":
Here's the link to the download page (I hope), click on the big green "download" button, the file will take some time to download as it is about 220Mb.

Now to install the driver:
Run the installer (the file you just downloaded:
There will be a couple of license messages, accept them
Finally you will get to a page which gives you the choice of "standard" or "advanced" installation - select the advanced option.
A new screen will appear with options for where to store the driver and the like, leave all these as they are, look for a small button or tick box that is labeled "clean installation" and click that.
Now start the installation proper, there may be a few blank screens and re-boots - some of the blanks can be scarily long...
Once the installation is finished I do a final re-boot just to make sure that the driver has loaded properly.

(I suggest you print out this message so you can follow the instructions.)

(BTW; your computer is about the same as one of mine, which has been running SETI continuously, so don't give up on the old girl yet)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

It's ok Fred,

Sometimes we forget we are talking techy....


Grant wanted you to update your driver. Brent was questioning if the video driver would work with your graphics cards.

Grant posted a link to a United Kingdom download for nvidia driver for your card.

Grant, I looked up his card and windows version on the USA site and it says nvidia video driver 341.81 should work on that card.

What do you think?

Edit..
I won't post the link until someone says it's ok


Brent wanted to know about what you are seeing. So do I. Are you and your wife share your computer and have separate log ins?

you also talk about the manager

This is a screen shot of a basic manager


and this is the advance view



Are these what you are referring to when you talk about the differences in the appearance of the managers?

Zalster

Grant, I looked up his card and windows version on the USA site and it says nvidia video driver 341.81 should work on that card.

Yep, pretty much everything up to around there will support his onboard graphics.
I think it's around there, or just after, they dropped support for older hardware.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Ok, here is the link for nvidia driver 341.81

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/89879/en-us

It should take him to Nvidias web page to download that driver.