As of around April 14th I have suddenly gotten a lot of "Error while computing" in my work units.

Until then it had never happened before, but since April 14th I have so far had 4 of these errors.

It could be a coincidence, but it happened exactly at the same time as I received my first Breakthrough unit, and since then every single Breakthrough unit (3 total) have failed like this. One "normal" unit has failed as well.

Apart from that, my computer seems to be functioning normally. No crashes etc. in other applicetions/programs.

Any ideas as to what could cause this behaviour?

Funny, looking around for advice on the error message you get - <message> (unknown error) - exit code -1073741205 (0xc000026b) </message> - I find the answer that I myself have given someone else. ;-)

Error 0xc000026b means "The device has no drivers installed, or the drivers are configured incorrectly". Sometimes it's also to do with a missing DLL, but that can be part of the drivers.

Seeing how you now have this error on all CPU tasks, also on a Multibeam, I suspect something just went awry on your system, a bit got turned on wrong, or perhaps a slight corruption happened someplace.

First check if your CPU isn't just running too hot. You can check that with a program such as Core Temp, Speedfan, or eFMer's TThrottle. If it is, you may want to check if the fan is still clean enough to pump air around, and else it might be an idea to clean out the dust bunnies.

Another quick way to fix apparent continuous errors is a reboot of the computer. Not just log off and back on, but a full power-cycle.

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Thanks for replying :)

I checked the core temperature. I have two cores, and their temperatures are between 46 and 54 degrees Celcius, so this shouldn't be the cause of the problem.

I turn off my computer every evening, but I'm not sure whether this counts as a full reboot (the power cord is not removed from the socket).

As I wrote, this started happening exactly at the same time as I got my first Brakthrough work unit. I usually don't use the screensaver, but when I received the unit, I checked the graphics/screensaver once to see the new design (with the Breakthrough text etc.). The graphics took somewhat longer to appear than usual (perhaps 10-15 seconds), but then it displayed correctly.

Perhaps something was initialized the first time I chose to see the graphics?

Could a reinstall of the seti@home software perhaps solve the problem (and how do I go about doing this)?

As it is right now, every single work unit gets the "Error while computing".

I turn off my computer every evening, but I'm not sure whether this counts as a full reboot (the power cord is not removed from the socket).

Turning the computer off and back on counts as a full power cycle. Well, as long as you don't let the computer hibernate or sleep. No need to remove the power cable.

Perhaps something was initialized the first time I chose to see the graphics?

Each task uses its own graphics application, so if something went bad at the time of using the graphics, it would've been in your (videocard) drivers. Possible, but impossible to hunt down.

Could a reinstall of the seti@home software perhaps solve the problem (and how do I go about doing this)?

You cannot reinstall Seti, as you didn't install Seti in the first place.
You did install BOINC, which downloaded the applications and tasks, but uninstalling and reinstalling BOINC will not fix this, as with an uninstall of BOINC you only remove the managing program, not anything in the data directory or in the operating system.

You could check in Windows Event Viewer if something bad shows up from around the time you checked the graphics in the first place. Start->Search->type Event viewer->wait for it to load->Windows logs->Application / System.
You can next click Action->Find and type in "amd" (without quotes) to quickly find problems with the videocard. Or just check for any yellow and red markers and check what they were for.

One other thing, the ATI Radeon HD 5500/5600 series videocard that you have, do you remember which drivers you installed for it?
Have you ever (lately) got Windows tell you that a program you started (like a game) cannot play correctly in the colour setting used and that it's best to change to Basic colours? (Or some sort warning)

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I have had no errors in any other programs, and the drivers for my graphics card are the latest drivers available (I installed them a few months back. The card type itself is now at an age where the manufacturer doesn't update the drivers anymore).

I checked the event viewer, but there are no errors connected to the graphics card, and the few warnings are not connected to boinc (and they seem to appear at regular intervals, also before the problem appeared).

I'm a bit confused about not being able to uninstall the seti project. Does it mean, that NO files from the project (except the work units) are stored locally? No single bit of programming that tells the boinc how it should analyze the work units from seti@home?

To me (and I could be wrong) an "error while computing" sounds like an error happens, when boinc makes some sort of error using seti@home's rules for analyzing the work units. In other words: If I could remove these rules specifically connected to the seti project and redownload them, perhaps the problem is solved.

What you write (and again, you may be right) sounds like nothing except the work units are stored on my computer, and boinc downloads all rules for analyzing the units (no matter what project I add to boinc) each and every time, I start my computer. This sounds a bit like waste of bandwith to me :)

Added:

I found boinc's folder for Seti@home, exited boinc and removed the folder (moved it to another place on my computer) and then restarted boinc.

boinc recreated the folder and downloaded the seti@home files to the folder. It then continued working on the work units.

I haven o idea if this made a difference, as the errors seem to appear a bit randomly, but I'll let you know if the problem persists.

I said you cannot uninstall Seti, because you didn't install it, and that's true. That doesn't mean there are no files from Seti on your computer. of course there are Seti files, more precisely science applications, libraries and tasks. But these were downloaded by BOINC, and stored in a directory in the BOINC data directory. They weren't downloaded by you, and therefore you cannot uninstall them.

Now, what you just did by removing the Seti folder under the Projects folder in the data directory caused BOINC to download the science applications again and new tasks. Unless the project has the resend lost tasks function on again, I don't know, that changes as it takes up a lot of overhead on the server.

The function checks between the server and the contents of the Seti folder if all tasks are there, and if they aren't, you get them resent. When this function is off, you get sent new work.

At least your error now changed:

<message>
couldn't start app: CreateProcess() failed - Den angivne fil blev ikke fundet.
(0x2)
</message>

(The file specified was not found)

So, thinking further... do you have a strict anti virus product on your system?
We advise always to add the whole BOINC data directory and all directories and files therein to be excluded by scans of the anti virus and other anti-malware products, because these can cause problems due to files and executables 'looking' like they're malware, when they aren't. And when the AV locks the data directory, I can see things like this happen.

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Well, removing/redownloading the seti files didn't help.

boinc worked fine yesterday until I turned off the computer. When I turned on the computer today, the active work unit was immediately marked as "error while computing" and a new unit was downloaded.

This has happened with quite a few of the other units (that is: the unit is marked as error upon starting the computer).

I use Avira free antivirus. I will try adding the boinc data directory to be excluded from scans.

Added: I have now added the whole boinc data directory as well as the boinc processes in use (boinc.exe, boincmgr.exe and boinctray.exe) to be excluded from scans and real time protection. I will let you know if it has any effect.

Adding the data directory etc. to the antivirus exceptions had no effect.

I tried running the boinc installer and chose "repair", but that didn't have any effect either.

Something is definitely fishy, though. My kids were playing Minecraft, and the program just terminated and the computer tried restarting (they cancelled this, it was like a normal shutdown). I could see, that this coincided with boinc having another "Error while computing". The kids are not that old and this kind of strange behaviour only seems to happen when they are around the computer (not me), so it may be that they have pressed something they were not supposed to.

I had Windows (7) run a memory test upon boot, but no errors showed up. There were also no errors when I made a complete scan of the harddisk as well as a stress test of the CPU.

Anyway, I have decided just to stop boinc for the time being. Perhaps I will try again sometime in the future :)

Well, I did see one task terminate without errors yesterday, you even got credit for it. So it would seem that your computer can conclude tasks normally.

But you also seem to have set BOINC its preferences up to only do calculations when the computer is idle, as else your BOINC would return more tasks per day. So it is a bit difficult for me to follow, and what with the correct tasks removal within 24 hours I just have to see that tasks end correctly at the right time, or miss that. (After tasks finish correctly they only stay visible in your task list for 24 hours, then they're removed from the database so not to crowd the database too much).

I think your decision is a good one.
Albeit, both your CPU and GPU should be able to run this work without any problems, but I don't know what else happens on that system that can run interference. Hope to see you again in the future. :)

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