I've downloaded Seti at Home and it's running, but where is the screensaver? The seti screensaver isn't listed on the Windows list of screensavers. My operating system is Windows XP Professional SP3, with DirectX 9.0

Anybody help?

Surely you downloaded BOINC and attached to SETI as a project. Isn't BOINC listed in the available screen savers?

I downloaded the "Seti@Home" application from Cnet. When I click the "Boinc" icon the manager comes up with Seti@Home. According to the manager Seti@Home is running four programs at the same time - but still no screensaver.

I used to have Seti@Home on my old Pentium machine during the late 1990s that downloaded and worked perfectly without all of the hassle that I'm now experiencing. Typical of modern software: overcomplicated and incomprehensible. You aren't given an email address that I could find, but a request to download Skype for voice chat. Useless for me because a stroke has left me with aphasia so I can't use the telephone.

I've seen the boinc screensaver and it isn't the Seti@home screensaver that I want.

First, welcome (back) to SETI@Home. You have managed to connect to SETI@Home, and have four Astropulse tasks running - I'll explain what this means in a bit...

A few things, first CNET is not the official place to get BOINC from, the version being distributed by them is somewhat out of date, visit:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
To get the current version (doon't download the version with the virtual machine, you don't need it for SETI@Home
I'm sorry, but I can't help you with you problem regarding the screen saver to work as I don't use them.

The reason for all this messing about, which we didn't have back in the 1990s, is that back then there was only SETI@Home, and virtually no other large scale distributed projects around. BOINC was developed as a shell in which distributed computing projects can exist and be managed. This has led to some "interesting" side effects including issues with screen savers, more so when you have a GPU involved (which I see you don't have).

Now back to the tasks. There are two different, but related, ways in which SETI@Home does its search.
First, and most closely related to the old screen saver, is the "MultiBeam", or "MB". These are a fairly detailed search for very narrow band spikes and pulse over a short time period. These tasks typically take a few hours to run (on my CPUs)
Second, and these are what you are processing just now, is the Astopulse search. This is looking at a longer time frame, at the same data as the MB, but looking for repeating pulses. These tasks take longer to run, a day or more on my CPUs, so could take several days to complete on your Atom based system.
(Note: These time are processing times, not real hours on the clock times, so might even be a week or more if you only run your PC for a few hours a day).

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I downloaded the "Seti@Home" application from Cnet. When I click the "Boinc" icon the manager comes up with Seti@Home. According to the manager Seti@Home is running four programs at the same time - but still no screensaver.

I wasn't aware that CNet was offering such a thing. Personally, I prefer to go directly to the source and never use offerings from third parties.

I used to have Seti@Home on my old Pentium machine during the late 1990s that downloaded and worked perfectly without all of the hassle that I'm now experiencing. Typical of modern software: overcomplicated and incomprehensible. You aren't given an email address that I could find, but a request to download Skype for voice chat. Useless for me because a stroke has left me with aphasia so I can't use the telephone.

Can you imagine the number of people emailing or calling for tech support to the SETI@home team if they had a phone number or email address? There's only 5 part-time people running the project. They'd never get any work done! :-) That is why they created these help boards, so experienced users such as myself can help people like you. :-)

I've seen the boinc screensaver and it isn't the Seti@home screensaver that I want.

Did you wait long enough? Because BOINC will run the project's screen saver if there is one, and it will cycle the screen saver between all running tasks (you said you have four running at once). The default BOINC screen saver will show up if there's an issue initializing the screen saver graphics, but as it cycles through the other running tasks, it will show up, you just have to give it time.

Look for the BOINC screen saver, not the SETI screen saver.

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BOINC WIKI

... but a request to download Skype for voice chat.

That's because you did Download something (anything) from CNET !

Don't get anything from CNET (download.cnet.com) or you will be in high risk to be infested with AdWare and virus-like 'add-ons' to your system!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com#Adware
http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/16971n/friendly_warning_downloadcom_adware_f_you_cnet/
(do your own search for more ...)

- You were "request to download Skype for voice chat" by the CNET installer, NOT by BOINC or SETI@home
- If it was the only bad thing done to you by the CNET installer then you are very lucky
- Skype do not use "the telephone" and is mainly for text 'chat' (but can do also free video calls to other computers over Internet)


AGAIN:
Don't get anything from CNET (download.cnet.com)
 

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

AGAIN:
Don't get anything from CNET (download.cnet.com)
 

I don't think he's referring to getting the software from CNet (though I agree with you that no one should use it).

I think he's referring to the line at the top of the Q&A page:

Talk live via Skype with a volunteer, in any of several languages. Go to BOINC Online Help.

The link in BOINC Online Help leads to this page, which tells users to download Skype. It's not an uncommon complaint from people looking for help to think there's some sort of support email or support number. People come to expect personalized help and perceive it as disrespectful if one doesn't have it.

The problem is such support lines aren't free. They would require hiring skilled professionals to man the support lines. Such a thing is not a luxury SETI@home can afford, so they put up these forums as the next best thing. I'd say this forum has done a great job in helping people over the years.

My Seti Screensaver comes up ok, but for some reason the Frequency-Time-Power graph (the lower section) is always completely empty. Anyone know a cure for this?

Happens only on Intel HD Graphics, no cure unless Intel fix the OpenGL in the drivers to follow standards (it was working in old drivers (~2 years ago))

You would found the answer just by simple Google:
https://www.google.com/#q=Frequency-Time-Power+graph

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)