I find a lot lately that Boinc will be running and hogging My cpu time on PC1, And I just get more and more frustrated as I find that My webbrowser(Firefox) and other programs have to wait for Boinc(And wait and wait and etc.), I'd like to set Boincs Priority to Low all around on a PC at startup instead of Normal(Boinc.exe and Boincmgr.exe) so that Boinc will behave itself like a proper program, As currently I have to set the priority manually right now and It's a pain in the ass.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I find a lot lately that Boinc will be running and hogging My cpu time on PC1, And I just get more and more frustrated as I find that My webbrowser(Firefox) and other programs have to wait for Boinc(And wait and wait and etc.), I'd like to set Boincs Priority to Low all around on a PC at startup instead of Normal(Boinc.exe and Boincmgr.exe) so that Boinc will behave itself like a proper program, As currently I have to set the priority manually right now and It's a pain in the ass.

If you have a problem, I don't think it is a priority problem.

The science applications are launched by boinc.exe to run at idle priority. These are the ones that can sweep up almost every spare crumb of CPU cycles available, but their idle priority should keep them nearly out of the way of things running higher.

True enough, boincmgr.exe and boinc.exe run at normal priority, but on my machine they use extremely little CPU.

Right now, the current instance of boincmgr on this machine started up about four hours ago, and has used less than 1 second of CPU time since then. The I/O read bytes plus I/O write bytes in that time total less than 250 kilobytes.

The current instance of boinc.exe has also been running somewhat over four hours, and has used a little over 20 CPU seconds. It's I/O load is vastly higher than boincmgr, about 625 total Megabytes in that time. Still, that is not much I/O in fours hours if done in decent size batches, and I think the write I/O, at least, is associated with checkpointing and is done several hundred kilobytes at a time.

If these applications are holding up your Firefox, there is something wrong besides priority.

Now, on the other hand, if you walk away from the machine for a few hours and come back, the boinc aps collectively will have run your firefox stuff out of the disk cache, which will increase startup time when you resume, but I don't think priority fixes that.

Standing by to be corrected...

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I find a lot lately that Boinc will be running and hogging My cpu time on PC1, And I just get more and more frustrated as I find that My webbrowser(Firefox) and other programs have to wait for Boinc(And wait and wait and etc.), I'd like to set Boincs Priority to Low all around on a PC at startup instead of Normal(Boinc.exe and Boincmgr.exe) so that Boinc will behave itself like a proper program, As currently I have to set the priority manually right now and It's a pain in the ass.

If you have a problem, I don't think it is a priority problem.

The science applications are launched by boinc.exe to run at idle priority. These are the ones that can sweep up almost every spare crumb of CPU cycles available, but their idle priority should keep them nearly out of the way of things running higher.

True enough, boincmgr.exe and boinc.exe run at normal priority, but on my machine they use extremely little CPU.

Right now, the current instance of boincmgr on this machine started up about four hours ago, and has used less than 1 second of CPU time since then. The I/O read bytes plus I/O write bytes in that time total less than 250 kilobytes.

The current instance of boinc.exe has also been running somewhat over four hours, and has used a little over 20 CPU seconds. It's I/O load is vastly higher than boincmgr, about 625 total Megabytes in that time. Still, that is not much I/O in fours hours if done in decent size batches, and I think the write I/O, at least, is associated with checkpointing and is done several hundred kilobytes at a time.

If these applications are holding up your Firefox, there is something wrong besides priority.

Now, on the other hand, if you walk away from the machine for a few hours and come back, the boinc aps collectively will have run your firefox stuff out of the disk cache, which will increase startup time when you resume, but I don't think priority fixes that.

Standing by to be corrected...

Ok, Well when I set both boinc and boincmgr to Low instead of Normal in taskmgr(Which I keep in the task bar near the clock) and Firefox started working better. Boinc here is the 5.10.28 for XP x64 of course, Firefox is 2.0.0.9 currently and this has been happening for a while before 2.0.0.9 of course. I just wanted a way to automate this in Boinc.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

The priority of boinc itself should be normal.. It only runs a small amount of time. The project specific cruncher is what takes all the time, and in call cases I've seen, is already running down at the idle level.

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The priority of boinc itself should be normal.. It only runs a small amount of time. The project specific cruncher is what takes all the time, and in call cases I've seen, is already running down at the idle level.

I've set the affinity of Boinc and Boincmgr to cpu2 and 3 so that hopefully Firefox will stay out of each others way.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

The priority of boinc itself should be normal.. It only runs a small amount of time. The project specific cruncher is what takes all the time, and in call cases I've seen, is already running down at the idle level.

I've set the affinity of Boinc and Boincmgr to cpu2 and 3 so that hopefully Firefox will stay out of each others way.

Does setting affinity "stick" for WU after WU?

The priority of boinc itself should be normal.. It only runs a small amount of time. The project specific cruncher is what takes all the time, and in call cases I've seen, is already running down at the idle level.

I've set the affinity of Boinc and Boincmgr to cpu2 and 3 so that hopefully Firefox will stay out of each others way.

Does setting affinity "stick" for WU after WU?

No, affinity will move the next WU to an active cpu core. If I set affinity 1 or 2 cores stop being busy and all the work is shared between the cores where work is still being done, So I don't like that setting, Low Priority works much better for Boinc and Boincmgr than Normal as they tend to stop all keyboard response to any program except the Task manager of course. If this were a normal cruncher I wouldn't do anything as It wouldn't be needed, I just don't like the fact that Boinc will take up so much time, Something should be done so that the Priority Boinc runs at can be selected while running Boinc.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Something should be done so that the Priority Boinc runs at can be selected while running Boinc.

While I have no experience with dual/quad cores, I can tell you that Firefox has routinely been slow to start up. That said, I notice sometimes that Java applications will end up fighting with the science app for the CPU. You may want to check for something similar happening...

I'm running BOINC v5.10.28 with Firefox on both my laptop and my main system and I do not experience these issues you are describing. I'd like to suggest that it's probably something else, but I have no idea where to start looking (not to mention the oddity that if you lower BOINC's priority that everything works better, which would seem to indicate that BOINC is the culprit - though I don't know how it could be).

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I'm running BOINC v5.10.28 with Firefox on both my laptop and my main system and I do not experience these issues you are describing. I'd like to suggest that it's probably something else, but I have no idea where to start looking (not to mention the oddity that if you lower BOINCs priority that everything works better, which would seem to indicate that BOINC is the culprit - though I don't know how it could be).

I guess that what I'm describing is not really happening?

Why does there always have to be something wrong with such and such, I have 45 programs running.

My OS is XP x64 and the 5.10.28 is a Native x64 Boinc and and App, Maybe It's a problem with Boinc for XP x64 and for all I know It might be.

My motherboard is an Asus P5W DH Deluxe w/a QX6700 @ 3.30GHz and here's what I'm running now(Below).

Note to JASC/Corel: Psp.exe is Paint Shop Pro v4.12 and I'll keep running It till I die(As PSPs v4.12 is better than a Newer version that is not as good as v4.12 where I need It feature wise:p).

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Something should be done so that the Priority Boinc runs at can be selected while running Boinc.

While I have no experience with dual/quad cores, I can tell you that Firefox has routinely been slow to start up. That said, I notice sometimes that Java applications will end up fighting with the science app for the CPU. You may want to check for something similar happening...

I didn't say anything about starting Firefox, Just while running It. As to Java I have no control over that and the Apps are already at Low Priority and don't continually interfere with PC1s operations(Only the Mouse and Task Manager are unaffected), While The Boinc Client(Boinc) and Boinc Manager(BoincMgr) are at Normal unless one opens Taskmanager and changes that by force. The Start menu goes unresponsive, Only Ctrl-Alt-Delete while going to Task Manager will work at those times, So I can only conclude Boinc is taking too much time up and since I don't have a Laptop I have those laptop type features(C1E, etc) disabled in the Bios as My PCs are Overclocked.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Something should be done so that the Priority Boinc runs at can be selected while running Boinc.

While I have no experience with dual/quad cores, I can tell you that Firefox has routinely been slow to start up. That said, I notice sometimes that Java applications will end up fighting with the science app for the CPU. You may want to check for something similar happening...

I didn't say anything about starting Firefox, Just while running It. As to Java I have no control over that and the Apps are already at Low Priority and don't continually interfere with PC1s operations(Only the Mouse and Task Manager are unaffected), While The Boinc Client(Boinc) and Boinc Manager(BoincMgr) are at Normal unless one opens Taskmanager and changes that by force. The Start menu goes unresponsive, Only Ctrl-Alt-Delete while going to Task Manager will work at those times, So I can only conclude Boinc is taking too much time up and since I don't have a Laptop I have those laptop type features(C1E, etc) disabled in the Bios as My PCs are Overclocked.

As an experiment, have you tried cutting back on your OC on that rig a bit? I have had times where one of my rigs will stay running and crunching Seti, but if I try to run much else, I get errors and program hangs, sometimes the OS itself will lock up. Just a thought.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Something should be done so that the Priority Boinc runs at can be selected while running Boinc.

While I have no experience with dual/quad cores, I can tell you that Firefox has routinely been slow to start up. That said, I notice sometimes that Java applications will end up fighting with the science app for the CPU. You may want to check for something similar happening...

I didn't say anything about starting Firefox, Just while running It. As to Java I have no control over that and the Apps are already at Low Priority and don't continually interfere with PC1s operations(Only the Mouse and Task Manager are unaffected), While The Boinc Client(Boinc) and Boinc Manager(BoincMgr) are at Normal unless one opens Taskmanager and changes that by force. The Start menu goes unresponsive, Only Ctrl-Alt-Delete while going to Task Manager will work at those times, So I can only conclude Boinc is taking too much time up and since I don't have a Laptop I have those laptop type features(C1E, etc) disabled in the Bios as My PCs are Overclocked.

As an experiment, have you tried cutting back on your OC on that rig a bit? I have had times where one of my rigs will stay running and crunching Seti, but if I try to run much else, I get errors and program hangs, sometimes the OS itself will lock up. Just a thought.

Sorry MS, Already tried that. I get no errors except in My typing whaichr sometimetimes gores arwy a bit, Unless I correct It first. :D

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I guess that what I'm describing is not really happening?

Come on, Batman, you know I didn't mean it like that. I was just trying to tell you that I'm using two of the same pieces of software and I don't experience the issue. I didn't mean to imply (nor do I think I really did imply) that you are not experiencing something.

All I was trying to suggest was that perhaps the culprit lies elsewhere. I mean, what other conclusion could one come to if this doesn't appear to be a widespread issue? The only problem is that I have no idea where to start looking.

Does the problem surface after a fresh (re)boot?
Have you tried running less programs to see if the problem is still there?
Have you tried exiting BOINC and restarting BOINC to see if that clears up any problems with CPU-hogging?


Come to think of it, I remember having a similar issue on one of my other machines running XP Pro 32bit. Turns out the problem was a Firefox plugin that wasn't very well tested.

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I guess that what I'm describing is not really happening?

Come on, Batman, you know I didn't mean it like that. I was just trying to tell you that I'm using two of the same pieces of software and I don't experience the issue. I didn't mean to imply (nor do I think I really did imply) that you are not experiencing something.

All I was trying to suggest was that perhaps the culprit lies elsewhere. I mean, what other conclusion could one come to if this doesn't appear to be a widespread issue? The only problem is that I have no idea where to start looking.

Does the problem surface after a fresh (re)boot?
Have you tried running less programs to see if the problem is still there?
Have you tried exiting BOINC and restarting BOINC to see if that clears up any problems with CPU-hogging?


Come to think of it, I remember having a similar issue on one of my other machines running XP Pro 32bit. Turns out the problem was a Firefox plugin that wasn't very well tested.

Yes, Most are TSRs(Terminate and Stay resident), Yes still happens, Of course while Boinc is not runnign the ptroblkem disappears.

My Firefox plugins:
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adblock 0.5.3.043
adblock plus 0.7.5.1
compact menu - Firebird 1.7.2.1
tabbrowser extensions 2.1.2006031301

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I'm not familiar with those plugins, so I have no idea if they're causing the problems or not. Try running Firefox without them for a while and see (try running without skins too). If the problem goes away, slowly re-enable them until you find the culprit.

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I think I'm with the others on this one: BOINC should be sleeping most of the time, and if it is asleep, the priority doesn't matter.

So the $65,536 question is, what's with the insomnia?

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So the $65,536 question is, what's with the insomnia?

Shouldn't that be bumped up to $1,048,576 these days? Or should we go for $1,073,741,824?

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Yes still happens, Of course while Boinc is not runnign the ptroblkem disappears.

Does the problem happen with BOINC running, but without Firefox running?

On a single-core machine I've seen similar slow-responses when I have multiple application using lots of memory and cpu-cycles. I’ve also used the low-priority trick which seems to work till reboot.

With the newer BOINC version I no longer have to do this. Instead (via Preferences, disk and memory usage tab) I severely throttle/restrict BOINC’s memory usage WHILE COMPUTER IS IN USE. And do NOT leave applications in memory while suspended.

This seems to solve similar issues for me.

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SETI@home since 1999
"Set it, and Forget it!"