It might be a good idea to run an error check on the drive to see what the underlying problem is. May be bad sectors through power outages, or just an old drive. But its possible that it can be fixed.

Not sure how effective the Windows utility is for this, but its worth a try. At risk of teaching about egg-sucking ... Local Drive -> Properties -> Tools -> Check Now ...

Needs a reboot and then gives you enough time to go to the pub , walk the dog, and watch Ben Hur (not necessarily in that order), but may be useful.

Hi Suzuki,

Thanks for the advice. Now I have most of my other valuable data (lots of images) backed up, I will give this a try. Maybe overnight.

I found two other corrupted files (unreadable) when copying the files over to (50+) CDs - fortunately neither was important. I think the drive is getting 'tired', but I need it to hang in there a while yet.

With regard to eggs, I belong to the school of 'tell me three times in preference to not at all!'

Thanks to all for your kind help.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

---

.... I have tried detaching both projects, and uninstalling BOINC completely. I even left it a week before re-downloading and reinstalling BOINC - and I'm still getting the problem ...

Regards,
Bill_Mole

When you posted that you uninstalled BOINC completely, did you delete the BOINC directory right after the uninstall? The uninstall does not actually delete the BOINC directory.

Hi All,

When I uninstalled and re-installed I did not realise it left the BOINC folder in place. I will try uninstalling, deleting all remnants, and reinstalling this evening - I'll let you know how it goes.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

Hi All,

I got called away and have just got back to sorting this out.

I tried uninstalling BOINC and deleting the files - and ran into problems. Every time I tried to open Slot 0 I got a disc format error which said my disc was not formatted asked if I wanted to reformat my (system) drive. Naturally at this time I checked NO. In the end I deleted what I could and 'moved' the rest of the BOINC Program Folder to a 'Junk' area. I had this before, just before I had to reformat the disc and reinstall Windows. I think my disc is showing bad symptoms - I will keep an eye on it to see if it gets any worse. Looks like upgrade discs time.

Re-installing BOINC, reattaching and uploading - and I got a Work Unit which is now crunching away fine!!

Thanks everyone for the tips - I didn't realise the uninstall left the files on the disc. Another lesson learned the hard way.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

It might be a good idea to run an error check on the drive to see what the underlying problem is. May be bad sectors through power outages, or just an old drive. But its possible that it can be fixed.

Not sure how effective the Windows utility is for this, but its worth a try. At risk of teaching about egg-sucking ... Local Drive -> Properties -> Tools -> Check Now ...

Needs a reboot and then gives you enough time to go to the pub , walk the dog, and watch Ben Hur (not necessarily in that order), but may be useful.

---

.... I have tried detaching both projects, and uninstalling BOINC completely. I even left it a week before re-downloading and reinstalling BOINC - and I'm still getting the problem ...

Regards,
Bill_Mole

When you posted that you uninstalled BOINC completely, did you delete the BOINC directory right after the uninstall? The uninstall does not actually delete the BOINC directory.

Hi All,

When I uninstalled and re-installed I did not realise it left the BOINC folder in place. I will try uninstalling, deleting all remnants, and reinstalling this evening - I'll let you know how it goes.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

Hi All,

I got called away and have just got back to sorting this out.

I tried uninstalling BOINC and deleting the files - and ran into problems. Every time I tried to open Slot 0 I got a disc format error which said my disc was not formatted asked if I wanted to reformat my (system) drive. Naturally at this time I checked NO. In the end I deleted what I could and 'moved' the rest of the BOINC Program Folder to a 'Junk' area. I had this before, just before I had to reformat the disc and reinstall Windows. I think my disc is showing bad symptoms - I will keep an eye on it to see if it gets any worse. Looks like upgrade discs time.

Re-installing BOINC, reattaching and uploading - and I got a Work Unit which is now crunching away fine!!

Thanks everyone for the tips - I didn't realise the uninstall left the files on the disc. Another lesson learned the hard way.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

---

.... I have tried detaching both projects, and uninstalling BOINC completely. I even left it a week before re-downloading and reinstalling BOINC - and I'm still getting the problem ...

Regards,
Bill_Mole

When you posted that you uninstalled BOINC completely, did you delete the BOINC directory right after the uninstall? The uninstall does not actually delete the BOINC directory.

Hi All,

I have been away from the screen for a couple of days - I still have to earn a living sometime! Before I went I checked the Program File folder for BOINC - it's not hidden or restricted access, but one of the slot subfolders was. I set open access to all folders and subfolders of BOINC yesterday - still won't start.

When I uninstalled and re-installed I did not realise it left the BOINC folder in place. I will try uninstalling, deleting all remnants, and reinstalling this evening - I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again for your advice and support.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

---

.... I have tried detaching both projects, and uninstalling BOINC completely. I even left it a week before re-downloading and reinstalling BOINC - and I'm still getting the problem ...

Regards,
Bill_Mole

When you posted that you uninstalled BOINC completely, did you delete the BOINC directory right after the uninstall? The uninstall does not actually delete the BOINC directory.

---

SL

Were you looking in the right slot directory? IIRC, each result running should have it's own init_data file in it's slot directory. The global_prefs is in the root.

Alinator

My init_data.xml file seems to relate solely to CPDN; there's no obvious entry for Seti, or Beta. I don't know what the file does or how it relates to the client or the apps - a bit of help with that may assist.

I'd try a full uninstall, delete the folder entirely and reinstall a new BOINC client - preferably one of the later releases to see if this fixes the problem.

Your daily quota has been hammered due to these errors by the looks of it!

This link should download BOINC v5.6.3 which I've had no problems with.

Worth a try!

---

23/09/2006 09:00:02||Rescheduling CPU: files downloaded
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Failed to open init file slots/0/init_data.xml
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Unrecoverable error for result 01jn02aa.14021.258.842330.3.116_1 (Couldn't start or resume: -108)

Error -108 is an ERR_FOPEN error. This occurs when BOINC is living in a hidden folder or any of the subfolders are hidden. Or you don't have any rights to those folders/files.

Make absolutely sure your BOINC folder, any subfolder and any files aren't hidden and that you have full rights to read/write on all the files under the account you run BOINC with.

Yep, and the part which is really baking my noodle is both of these events seem to have occured right around Update Tuesday on setups which were working fine and I can't come up with a good good reason why that would be or not be more wide spread. I generally look the updates over carefully and I don't recall seeing one which ran up a red flag for me to cause problems like this.

Curious.

Alinator

23/09/2006 09:00:02||Rescheduling CPU: files downloaded
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Failed to open init file slots/0/init_data.xml
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Unrecoverable error for result 01jn02aa.14021.258.842330.3.116_1 (Couldn't start or resume: -108)

Error -108 is an ERR_FOPEN error. This occurs when BOINC is living in a hidden folder or any of the subfolders are hidden. Or you don't have any rights to those folders/files.

Make absolutely sure your BOINC folder, any subfolder and any files aren't hidden and that you have full rights to read/write on all the files under the account you run BOINC with.

---

Hi Alinator,

Thanks for the advice. I have tried detaching both projects, and uninstalling BOINC completely. I even left it a week before re-downloading and reinstalling BOINC - and I'm still getting the problem.

The only thing that changed at the time the problem started was a Microsoft XP update. Maybe this reset something or blocked something. I can't see anything obvious, but might easily miss something silly.

Any ideas? I'm still stuck . . .

Thanks again for your support.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

Here's a link to the occurance of this problem over on E@H:

Can't Start or Resume

Interestingly this was on an AMD machine as well, but he's running Vista on it. As you can see the user worked around the problem by unstalling BOINC, deleting the BOINC folder, and then re-installing. As far as I can tell this machine has been running fine since.

However, this hasn't seemed to work in your case, so you'll have to start looking for the reason why. Again, the first thing that comes to my mind is this is a file permissions issue, so the question is what kind of install do you run; single, shared, or service? Do you have any kind of security software running which may be locking files in the BOINC directory for some reason (ie. AV, AT, etc.)?

You could take a look in the Event Viewer to see if there are any clues to why Windows won't let BOINC start intializing the files in the slot directory when starting the new result.

Another possibility is BOINC may think it's exceeding it's disk quota and doesn't have the room to start another result. You could try checking the global_prefs xml in the BOINC root directory and make sure the venue values are the same as what's shown on the web site controls page. If they look correct, you could try setting them so that BOINC has basically access to all the virtual memory and disk space available, then update the project and see what happens.

In any event this looks to be a real mystery, and I hate mysteries especially when they impact the same types of machines I have!

;-)

Alinator

<edit> Another thought just came to me, if you decide to try doing another re-install, instead of deleting the BOINC directory move it to a different location away from BOINC's default path. This way you can take a look at what changed and might help nail down what's going on here once and for all. :-)

This "Can't Start or Resume" issue came up over on E@H awhile back. I don't think a satisfactory explanation for what/why it happened was found, but IIRC a total clean BOINC reinstall (ie, deleting the whole BOINC folder before reinstalling) fixed the problem for the cruncher who brought up the problem.

HTH,

Alinator

Hi Alinator,

Thanks for the advice. I have tried detaching both projects, and uninstalling BOINC completely. I even left it a week before re-downloading and reinstalling BOINC - and I'm still getting the problem.

The only thing that changed at the time the problem started was a Microsoft XP update. Maybe this reset something or blocked something. I can't see anything obvious, but might easily miss something silly.

Any ideas? I'm still stuck . . .

Thanks again for your support.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

---

This "Can't Start or Resume" issue came up over on E@H awhile back. I don't think a satisfactory explanation for what/why it happened was found, but IIRC a total clean BOINC reinstall (ie, deleting the whole BOINC folder before reinstalling) fixed the problem for the cruncher who brought up the problem.

HTH,

Alinator

Can you post the messages to show the errors that BOINC is giving you.

I reckon you could have a problem with running main SETI and Beta. The client and app get confused.

Have a look at this thread to see if that helps you ... the guys sorted me out!! Hoping to return the favour.

Cheers, and hope this helps.

Steve.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I have been running both together quite happily before this 'glitch', and have tried detaching one or other to see if this might be a problem - no success.

Message log:

23/09/2006 08:36:16|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
23/09/2006 08:36:16|SETI@home|Reason: To fetch work
23/09/2006 08:36:16|SETI@home|Requesting 172800 seconds of new work
23/09/2006 08:36:18|SETI@home|Scheduler request succeeded
23/09/2006 08:36:21|SETI@home|Started download of file 11oc99aa.20018.32898.373564.3.221
23/09/2006 08:36:26|SETI@home|Finished download of file 11oc99aa.20018.32898.373564.3.221
23/09/2006 08:36:26|SETI@home|Throughput 78017 bytes/sec
23/09/2006 08:36:27||Rescheduling CPU: files downloaded
23/09/2006 08:36:56|SETI@home|Failed to open init file slots/0/init_data.xml
23/09/2006 08:36:56|SETI@home|Unrecoverable error for result 11oc99aa.20018.32898.373564.3.221_0 (Couldn't start or resume: -108)
23/09/2006 08:36:56||Rescheduling CPU: start failed
23/09/2006 08:36:56|SETI@home|Computation for task 11oc99aa.20018.32898.373564.3.221_0 finished
23/09/2006 08:46:30|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
23/09/2006 08:46:30|SETI@home|Reason: To fetch work
23/09/2006 08:46:30|SETI@home|Requesting 172800 seconds of new work, and reporting 1 completed tasks
23/09/2006 08:46:37|SETI@home|Scheduler request succeeded
23/09/2006 08:46:37|SETI@home|Message from server: No work sent
23/09/2006 08:46:37|SETI@home|Message from server: (reached daily quota of 1 results)
23/09/2006 08:46:37|SETI@home|No work from project
23/09/2006 08:59:51|SETI@home Beta Test|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta_cgi/cgi
23/09/2006 08:59:51|SETI@home Beta Test|Reason: To fetch work
23/09/2006 08:59:51|SETI@home Beta Test|Requesting 172800 seconds of new work, and reporting 1 completed tasks
23/09/2006 08:59:53|SETI@home Beta Test|Scheduler request succeeded
23/09/2006 08:59:55|SETI@home Beta Test|Started download of file 01jn02aa.14021.258.842330.3.116
23/09/2006 09:00:01|SETI@home Beta Test|Finished download of file 01jn02aa.14021.258.842330.3.116
23/09/2006 09:00:01|SETI@home Beta Test|Throughput 85822 bytes/sec
23/09/2006 09:00:02||Rescheduling CPU: files downloaded
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Failed to open init file slots/0/init_data.xml
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Unrecoverable error for result 01jn02aa.14021.258.842330.3.116_1 (Couldn't start or resume: -108)
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Deferring scheduler requests for 1 minutes and 0 seconds
23/09/2006 09:00:31||Rescheduling CPU: start failed
23/09/2006 09:00:31|SETI@home Beta Test|Computation for task 01jn02aa.14021.258.842330.3.116_1 finished
23/09/2006 09:01:10|SETI@home Beta Test|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta_cgi/cgi
23/09/2006 09:01:10|SETI@home Beta Test|Reason: To fetch work
23/09/2006 09:01:10|SETI@home Beta Test|Requesting 172800 seconds of new work, and reporting 1 completed tasks
23/09/2006 09:01:12|SETI@home Beta Test|Scheduler request succeeded
23/09/2006 09:01:12|SETI@home Beta Test|Message from server: No work sent
23/09/2006 09:01:12|SETI@home Beta Test|Message from server: (reached daily quota of 1 results)
23/09/2006 09:01:12|SETI@home Beta Test|No work from project

Typical Result 384148781 - Workunit Id = 92086052

I have no enhancements/speedups etc - just basic BOINC Install.

I'm stumped . . . thanks for your support & help.

Regards,
Bill_Mole

---

Can you post the messages to show the errors that BOINC is giving you.

I reckon you could have a problem with running main SETI and Beta. The client and app get confused.

Have a look at this thread to see if that helps you ... the guys sorted me out!! Hoping to return the favour.

Cheers, and hope this helps.

Steve.

---

Hi Folks,

I had been crunching away happily keeping my computer occupied with Seti & Beta for months.

Then I had a disc problem, so reformatted and re-installed windows - reloaded BOINC and got back on stream. All was well until Microsoft sent me an update about a month ago (I forgot to switch auto-update OFF - I don't trust them updates).

Then WHAM - Results file full of Compute Errors and no work on Seti or Beta. I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting, and even uninstalling and starting afresh. It's probably something stupid in the settings somewhere that M/S update has reset, but I am not really a computer expert and need help - any suggestions? I would really prefer not to go the reset/reinstall route again . . .

NOTE: I am behind a router, running McAfee Firewall and Antivirus, and all checks (inc using other 'free' tools) show my system is still 'clean' from virus or malware.

All advice gratefully received.

Thanks,
Bill_Mole

---