why do i keep getting tasks that last 24/25/26 seconds and loop round one saying waiting run, next saying postponed next saying running, hmm

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There is a shorty storm going around. These are (usually VLAR) tasks that have a lot of radio interference in them and that run for a short amount of time before clunking out. Nothing you can do about that.

If your problem is that a task starts and stops within 25 seconds before the next task starts, that's usually attributed to a lot of work in cache against a very low resource share. Then BOINC just doesn't believe it is able to finish all these tasks before their deadline, something that is the prime directive for the program to try to do.

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Or, in the specific case of SETI@Home, it's a specific problem with NVidia 436.xx and later drivers on Maxwell class GPUs (GTX980, 970 - and certain GTX 700 series models, like your 750 Ti).

See the thread NVidia 436.xx and later drivers can cause ... in Number Crunching, and especially message 2017629