there are two seperate entities when running boinc, they are Boinc and Seti. Seti is the science application that actually does the work, Boinc just manages that (and any other) application. boinc consists of 3 parts; Boinc.exe (the daemon, which is required to run and does all the internal management), Boincmgr.exe (boinc manager, give us humans something to see and interact with), and Boincscr.exe (this is the screensaver).

OK we'll have it here.

This starting/stopping of boinc is my main concern at the moment. If it's not installed as a service (we checked that), and there's NO boinc in the startup of msconfig. I assume you start boinc manually when you want it to run, yes? Please explain "exactly" what you do to shut down boinc, do you use the B in the systray, or Select "file" then "exit" from the pull down menus, do you click the red x in teh upper right?

It's normal. The "to completion" is an estimate, it's not real wall-clock time. So as the result progresses, the time can go up. Eventually, later in the result it will stop rising and then go down again. Nothing to worry about and really nothing to baby-sit. Just let it run in the background.

clik on the projects tab, click on seti in the right hand box and then update in the left hand column.