I recently completed a WU and was waiting for the third person turned in their WU. The other two people received credit but I didn't. My WU was the second one turned in but was listed as invalid while the one before me and the one after were listed as valid. If someone could explain why the WU after being worked on for 4.5 hours was considered invalid it would be greatly appreciated. The WU in question is 249655496. Thank you in advance.

Warren Rogers

Hi Warren,
Due to the slight differences in different computers, each computer is capable of producing slightly different results. We have a "validation" procedure where these slight variations are considered. There are three levels, "strongly similar", "weakly similar" and "not similar". If two results are "strongly similar" which means the results returned are within one percent or so of the other, they are validated and both are issued credit. Any other situation requires a third result to be issued. If all three results are "weakly similar" then all three are validated and credit is issued. If however the third result is strongly similar to one or the other of the other two results, the two are validated and the third is determined to be "not similar" and is not issued credit. In your case, your result was found to be not similar to the others. In other words, the third result matched the first result within a percent or so. Yours was outside the limits for validation.

This can be caused by several things. Sometimes a work unit just returns varying results, but other times it can be caused by something in your computer. These can be heat buildup due to dust in the heatsinks/fans, a memory stick going bad, too aggressive of an overclock, and several other things. An occasional invalid result is nothing to worry about, but if you have more than one or two, or you notice it happening more often then it might be a good idea to check your system for the above mentioned problems.

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Andy