Just to be clear, in the message posted before the items were from SETI@Home, not from Einstein@Home or MilkyWay@Home.

---

George

Do you have any anti-virus or internet security package installed on that machine?

You seem to have got past the first hurdle with

05/23/18 2:39:14 PM | | Fetching configuration file from http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/get_project_config.php

That tells BOINC where to find the rest of the information it needs to complete the attachment process. But it fails at the next step:

05/23/18 3:17:00 PM | SETI@home | Fetching scheduler list

never gets a reply. That's still very early in the process, long before any IDs are checked or issued - I don't think they are your problem.

Yes, I have Avast Premier, Malwarebytes, Cybereason, and Windows Defender. I don't think this (they) are the issue since I made a connection to the server(s) to get tasks for Einstein@Home and Milkyway@Home with out having to do anything with them.

As for your second point, that's the one I'm concerned about. I still think it's because of my meddling and somehow having 2 I.D. numbers for the same project; i.e. SETI@Home. I hope someone from Berkeley and/or SETI can intervene... but I can only hope.

Thanks for the reply.

---

George

Yes, I have Avast Premier, Malwarebytes, Cybereason, and Windows Defender.

I'm surprised that system is able to function at all.
Generally one security programme at a time is best.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Here is the original first post in the thread from George. I am reposting it as it contained confidential info that needed to be removed:

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Please HELP!!

I am not getting any response, such as communicating with the server and downloading tasks, from SETI@Home, but Einstein@Home and MilkyWay@Home are doing just fine.

I began this multi project about 3 months ago (joined SETI on Oct. 23rd) and have accumulated 432k+ credits. Then I proceeded to mess things up. I changed my PC's name, changed my passwords, used the Boinc Account Manager, and even went from a Windows 7 Pro to a Windows 10 Pro operating system. At sometime along the way I realized the problem and I've been trying to fix it since.

I used one of Boinc's volunteers (name will remain anonymous). He was VERY helpful, spent countless hours on trying to solve my problem, but no luck. He recommended I get the new Boinc client version 7.10.2, so I did. Still the same.

Also my computer has not been recognized by Boinc for SETI@Home as Windows 10 Pro. It still shows Windows 7 Pro.

I think my inability to communicate lies with mismatched ID #'s, but I don't know. If you can help, please do!

Below are my stats from my "Your Account" page:

User ID: 10598086

And from "Boinc Stats":

BOINC Cross Project Identifier: 84ae7ef08ecc01dfbed770a1917b8af7

User ID: 18853313830

BOINC Manager Log File:

05/23/18 2:35:47 PM | | cc_config.xml not found - using defaults
05/23/18 2:35:47 PM | | Starting BOINC client version 7.10.2 for windows_x86_64
05/23/18 2:35:47 PM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
05/23/18 2:35:47 PM | | Libraries: libcurl/7.47.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8
05/23/18 2:35:47 PM | | Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC
05/23/18 2:35:47 PM | | Running under account georg
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | CUDA: NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GT 220 (driver version 342.01, CUDA version 6.5, compute capability 1.2, 1024MB, 871MB available, 196 GFLOPS peak)
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Creating new client state file
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Host name: GWG-PC
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Processor: 8 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz [Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5]
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pni ssse3 cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt syscall nx lm vmx tm2 pbe
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | OS: Microsoft Windows 10: Professional x64 Edition, (10.00.16299.00)
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Memory: 15.99 GB physical, 18.37 GB virtual
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Disk: 200.01 GB total, 146.88 GB free
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Local time is UTC -5 hours
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | VirtualBox version: 5.2.8
05/23/18 2:35:50 PM | | Last benchmark was 17674 days 19:35:47 ago
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | No general preferences found - using defaults
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | Preferences:
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | max memory usage when active: 8187.56 MB
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | max memory usage when idle: 14737.60 MB
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | max disk usage: 146.78 GB
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | don't use GPU while active
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25%
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | Setting up project and slot directories
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | Checking active tasks
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | Setting up GUI RPC socket
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | Checking presence of 0 project files
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | This computer is not attached to any projects
05/23/18 2:35:55 PM | | Suspending GPU computation - computer is in use
05/23/18 2:37:02 PM | | Fetching configuration file from http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/get_project_config.php
05/23/18 2:39:14 PM | | Fetching configuration file from http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/get_project_config.php
05/23/18 2:39:37 PM | | Running CPU benchmarks
05/23/18 2:39:37 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
05/23/18 2:40:08 PM | | Benchmark results:
05/23/18 2:40:08 PM | | Number of CPUs: 8
05/23/18 2:40:08 PM | | 3258 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
05/23/18 2:40:08 PM | | 9186 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
05/23/18 2:40:09 PM | | Resuming computation
05/23/18 3:10:36 PM | | Resuming GPU computation
05/23/18 3:11:38 PM | | Suspending GPU computation - computer is in use
05/23/18 3:16:56 PM | SETI@home | update requested by user
05/23/18 3:17:00 PM | SETI@home | Fetching scheduler list
05/23/18 3:17:01 PM | SETI@home | update requested by user
05/23/18 3:17:56 PM | | Resuming GPU computation
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | No general preferences found - using defaults
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | Reading preferences override file
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | Preferences:
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | max memory usage when active: 8187.56 MB
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | max memory usage when idle: 14737.60 MB
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | max disk usage: 10.00 GB
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | don't use GPU while active
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 75%
05/23/18 3:20:23 PM | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
05/23/18 3:20:51 PM | | Re-reading cc_config.xml
05/23/18 3:20:51 PM | | cc_config.xml not found - using defaults
05/23/18 3:20:51 PM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | No general preferences found - using defaults
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | Reading preferences override file
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | Preferences:
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | max memory usage when active: 8187.56 MB
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | max memory usage when idle: 14737.60 MB
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | max disk usage: 10.00 GB
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | don't use GPU while active
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 75%
05/23/18 3:21:20 PM | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
05/23/18 3:22:32 PM | | Running CPU benchmarks
05/23/18 3:22:33 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
05/23/18 3:22:50 PM | SETI@home | Fetching scheduler list
05/23/18 3:23:03 PM | | Benchmark results:
05/23/18 3:23:03 PM | | Number of CPUs: 8
05/23/18 3:23:03 PM | | 3263 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
05/23/18 3:23:03 PM | | 9158 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
05/23/18 3:23:04 PM | | Resuming computation
05/23/18 3:49:22 PM | | Re-reading cc_config.xml
05/23/18 3:49:22 PM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
05/23/18 3:49:31 PM | | Re-reading cc_config.xml
05/23/18 3:49:31 PM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task

As I mentioned to someone else, Avast Premier is my primary AV, Malwarebytes is an anti-malware program that specifically says it works along side of your primary AV, and Cybereason is an anti-ransomware program that does the same as Malwarebytes. Windows defender works as a backup AV program, shutting itself down when the primary AV program is active, but reverts to active when the primary is shut down for any reason. I hope this helps you with a better understanding of these AV programs.

---

George

As I said before, I see no evidence in the log to support your guess about muddled ID numbers.

I think the most likely culprit is Avast: check the settings carefully. I see that https://support.avast.com/en-gb/article/Antivirus-New-Features lists a number of components with 'Shield' in their name:

Webcam Shield
Sensitive Data Shield
Ransomware Shield
Behavior Shield
Passive Mode
Game Mode

These are the ones most likely to block network traffic (ignore any advice you may receive here or elsewhere about excluding folders from AV scans: nothing has hit the hard disk yet, so there's nothing to scan).

'Behavior Shield' is one to check. The Boinc client's actions (no user interface, accesses the internet, downloads executable files) can look suspicious to a nervous AV. See if you can manually allow boinc.exe to access the internet, or, failing that, if you can temporarily disable that shield while you make another attempt to complete the attachment to SETI. If you're about to complain that BOINC has a GUI so my remarks don't apply, that's boincmgr.exe - a different program.

If that doesn't solve it, try the other shield variants in Avast: after that, check if Avast is one of the AVs which take over management of the Windows firewall. Again, boinc.exe needs to be allowed to make outgoing connections to the internet over TCP ports 80 and 443. If those permissions haven't been set yet, make them.

Thanks Richard, I appreciate the thorough response. But...

I went to Avast and turned "OFF" Behavior Shield, and I also turned "OFF" File, Web, Mail, Sensitive Data, plus Ransomware Shields. My camera is not plugged in so I don't have Camera Mode turned on, and I only play card games, not the other shoot-em-up and race-to-die games, so Game Mode is off too. I then tried to get SETI@Home to connect to the server(s) with no luck. Thinking it was a delay issue I decided to leave my PC that way (...argh) with it left on overnight and try it again this morning. Still no luck, SETI@Home will not communicate. Just leaves a "deferred" message.

So, leaving my system as I left it last night, I then went into the Windows Defender Firewall settings and added boinc.exe, boinccmd.exe, boincmgr.exe, and boincscr.exe as allowed through the Windows Defender Firewall. Still no luck. I'm not sure if Windows Defender is the correct and only firewall used by Windows 10. I used Cortana to look for Windows Firewall and it steered me to Windows Defender Firewall. I did check to see if Avast had a firewall, and it does, so I went in and added boinc.exe to the packet rules as being allowed to access in/out. Once more no luck.

I've since reconnected my Avast settings as they were by default and ran a quick scan and also ran Malwarebytes to scan my PC. The good thing is they found nothing amiss.

So, once again I think (but I'm no expert) the I.D.s could be messed with. But then, I defer to you Richard, as I'm at a loss.

---

George

One thing extra I forgot to mention is when pinging Google I have consistently gotten a "timed out" response on number 10 from Comcast switching over to (?????) and then it continues until it reaches Google. I haven't been able to get a hold of anyone that has any knowledge of pinging at Comcast yet. I'll wait until after the holiday weekend and try my luck again.

As for pinging the SETI@Home server(s), I got this far: https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_server_status.php
Then I didn't know which one (or more) to choose, or even the particular URLs to make a ping to.

---

George

The one you need to contact first is actually this web server here. (That's the stage you'd reached when you posted the log). The scheduler list is embedded in the home page at

setiathome.berkeley.edu

After that, the scheduler itself is at

setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu

That one's worth checking as well. There are more as you go along, but no need to confuse Comcast more than you have to.