Does anyone know if Win 7 or BOINC has a memory leak problem? I have had my unit up for about 5 days and I was checking the memory useage to find out why it was so slugish and found there was almost nothing remaining. I rebooted and had McAfee and BOINC running with 2 GPU and 4 cpu tasks. I monitored the memory useage for the next 2 days and it was slowly draining.

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If you want it bad, you get it bad

Need a bit more information than you're giving at the moment. Win 7 version, BOINC version, stock or optimised apps, hardware installed... blah, blah blah.

In general, I don't think so. My 2 computers (see sig) run 24/7, and all I do is reschedule the VLAR's back to the CPU. I do a bit of gaming, and have added an 8800GTX to my main rig, which does CUDA on BOINC, and PHYSX while gaming. Using Win 7-64HP on the main rig with BOINC 6.10.25, and Vista 32-HP with BOINC 6.10.25 on the other with the Lunatics optimised apps.

You say you've noticed memory is draining, where's it going? In task manager, which I'm presuming where you've noticed the problem, are any programmes/processes grabbing more memory, and slowly creeping up?

Hope that helps, Gizbar.

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A proud GPU User Server Donor!

Does anyone know if Win 7 or BOINC has a memory leak problem?

Are you using FireFox? See this thread at the BOINC dev boards.

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

Using McAfee, on 3 host's, I noticed it 'takes' quite a lot CPU-Cycles (8-16%!) for Online-Real-Time scanning. That is on my (T2400-HP-Laptop).

IMO, it's not necessary, if only BOINC is active. (I switch it off, when not browsing the WEB.)
Having 20 or more 'sites open', starts this behavior, on my LT.

[ADDED] And also checked : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; nl; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3.
Sometimes, I even forget closing it, before going to sleep, but I've never seen it eating memory, normal at 112MByte max. 126MByte, 10 'sites' open.

First suspected McAfee or FF Add-Ons and/or Plug-In's, haven't found anything, yet.

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Anything's possible. It might be an idea to submit a HijackThis! log on a security forum, just to rule out greeblies in there, by expert eyeballs. Once that's eliminated as a possibility, then switching off most stuff and adding each back incrementally until the problem shows itself should help to isolate what's going on, whether Boinc/Science app related, or something else.

Jason

[Edit:] Here's a small clue. While the AKv8 executable you're using is pretty much time proven, and so fairly highly unlikely to have memory leaks as such, a quick look at some results shows this message:

No heartbeat from core client for 30 sec - exiting

which can indicate heavy loading of the machine by something other than Boinc (among many possible causes) ... so there could be something going on with that machine.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

If you've set 'keep in memory when suspended', you could UNcheck that and see, if there's any change.
In Your Account or in BOINC-Manager, Advanced tab.

Did you scan your host for Trojans, virusses, rootkits, etc.

I remember this [i]malbehavior, with BOINC 6.10.37, VISTA Home Premium 32BIT, Q6600, 2GiG DDR2 and WU's from DOCKING@Home, 2 month ago.
Instead of resuming, the WU in progress, it started a new one, until the rig ran out of memory.

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I knew that there would be some people along to help me out! :o)

I've been running Firefox since version 2. and still not associated it with any problems with memory leaks. That's not to say it doesn't happen. I do notice a slowdown from time to time, which a reboot does clear up. The Vista machine my kids use, so is totally vanilla, apart from the BOINC stuff that I run. They only come over every other weekend, and it seems a shame to have it sitting there switched off, so off to BOINC it goes, lol!

Don't use McAfee, I use the free version of Avast, so that's another area to look at. (Thanks, Fred!)

I think Jason has narrowed it down a bit, finding that the core 'heartbeat' has stopped responding. I don't get that on my machine, even though it seems to be a similar spec to yours. <edit> At least, I don't think I get that. I'll have to check some of my results! </edit>

What GPU tasks are you running? Can't be Seti yet, as they're still developing the app for Astropulse at the moment, MB doesn't even seem to be on the horizon as far as ATI cards go.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Gizbar.

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A proud GPU User Server Donor!

Running SETI Enhanced Optimized MB and Opti-CUDA (9800GTX+ &GTS250 {G92}, on my
XP64 rig. Also GPUGrid and Einstein, the latter uses 1CPU +1 GPU!

A Q6600 with an ATI HD4850 & HD5770, doing Collatz C. which I'll set-up for Astro-Pulse Hybrid, it's nice to see 1 HD5770, reaching 10 Million Cobblestones, since December 24, last year ;-).
I've seen that this card is fast and I want it to do SETI, too
Hope to do so, in the weekend to come.

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Don't use McAfee, I use the free version of Avast, so that's another area to look at. (Thanks, Fred!)

Gizbar.

I have to agree with this statement for different reasons. I have repaired several hundred computers, most of which were for virus infections. At least 95% of the virus infections had the free version of McAfee. After a lot of research I found the NOD 32 antivirus from ESET. It scans everything going into and out of your system, and uses very few resources. It is very effective at stopping virus's, and will not slow your system down or interfere with other programs. You don't even have to reboot after you install it.

Just my two cents.
Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

RFP,

There is a documented Microsoft bug that says there is a memory leak in Windows 7 RTM. It will be fixed in the first service pack. Strangely, this bug manifests itself when using a 3rd party anti-virus product. :)

Here is the article and the hotfix. You will have to register with Microsoft to download it, or search the warz.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979223

--DJ

RFP,

There is a documented Microsoft bug that says there is a memory leak in Windows 7 RTM. It will be fixed in the first service pack. Strangely, this bug manifests itself when using a 3rd party anti-virus product. :)

Here is the article and the hotfix. You will have to register with Microsoft to download it, or search the warz.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979223

--DJ

Thanks DJ!

I'll have a read of that myself. They kept that one quiet... I wonder if it got rolled out on an update, or whether they are just waiting for SP1.

<edit> Just had a look at my installed updates, and it isn't listed in them. Also read the page that you linked to, and it does say to only install if you are suffering this problem, with the usual disclaimers, blah, blah, blah.
So I think I'll leave my system alone for now, but it does give RFP a lot more information to sift through... </edit>

regards, Gizbar.

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A proud GPU User Server Donor!

Using McAfee, on 3 host's, I noticed it 'takes' quite a lot CPU-Cycles (8-16%!) for Online-Real-Time scanning. That is on my (T2400-HP-Laptop).

Wow, that is high. I'm using McAfee VS Enterprise 8, and it sometimes blips to 1% CPU useage, but most of the time is usually 0.

Did you set up exceptions in it, so it's not scanning your BOINC Data/Projects folder?

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Thanks for all the info. I do use Firefox and I think a morning reboot might help until I can do some more research. Thanks again.

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If you want it bad, you get it bad