I've let BOINC run with World Community Grid (WCG) projects for many years. I check the Manager occasionally to see that everything seems to be working okay and it almost always is. I just checked it today and found that there were NO tasks! None waiting and none running. ??? Usually there is at least one screenful of tasks waiting to be crunched, so this was a shock to say the least. It looks like the last upload was November 7th (it's the 11th now).

I have 2 computers running BOINC - one running Vista that is also crunching WCG projects and it seems to be doing fine, with the expected number of tasks waiting patiently.

The computer with no tasks runs on Windows 7 (with all the updates, except for that infernal Windows 10 upgrade nagware). Both machines run ESET as the anti-virus, so it can't be anything about an update to my antivirus. My firewall is my router, to which both machines are attached.

I'm utterly at a loss to even know what to check to find what the problem is! But I'll try to describe what I'm seeing. Under the Transfers tab, it had said it was trying to download 2 files -- both .png files. ??? I aborted both downloads, then went to the Projects tab, selected World Community Grid (the only project listed, which is as expected) and clicked Update, but it seems it can't connect. It keeps deferring communication.

I tried updating the software too, from 7.2.42 to 7.2.47. The only thing that changed was the icon in the System Tray, which now shows WCG's logo instead of BOINC's.

What the heck happened? Any ideas? And how do I fix this? Many thanks in advance for any help with this. Let me know what information you need to help me diagnose and fix this.

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I'll copy the log below, which will show activity since I updated BOINC. Maybe it will shed some light on the problem:
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11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Starting BOINC client version 7.2.47 for windows_x86_64
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Libraries: libcurl/7.25.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/1.2.6
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Running under account Wendy
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | OpenCL: Intel GPU 0: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 (driver version 10.18.14.4264, device version OpenCL 1.2, 1298MB, 1298MB available, 184 GFLOPS peak)
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | OpenCL CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz (OpenCL driver vendor: Intel(R) Corporation, driver version 4.2.0.148, device version OpenCL 1.2 (Build 148))
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Host name: user-PC
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Processor: 4 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz [Family 6 Model 60 Stepping 3]
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pni ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movebe popcnt aes nx lm vmx tm2 pbe
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | OS: Microsoft Windows 7: Professional x64 Edition, Service Pack 1, (06.01.7601.00)
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Memory: 7.88 GB physical, 15.76 GB virtual
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Disk: 465.66 GB total, 292.97 GB free
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Local time is UTC -5 hours
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Version change (7.2.42 -> 7.2.47)
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | World Community Grid | URL http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/; Computer ID 2751875; resource share 200
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | World Community Grid | General prefs: from World Community Grid (last modified 19-Jan-2014 21:05:22)
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | World Community Grid | Computer location: home
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | General prefs: using separate prefs for home
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Reading preferences override file
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Preferences:
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | max memory usage when active: 3228.32MB
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | max memory usage when idle: 7263.72MB
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | max disk usage: 20.00GB
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | max CPUs used: 3
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | don't use GPU while active
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25%
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Found project_init.xml for http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
11-Nov-2015 4:38:51 PM | | Not using a proxy
11-Nov-2015 4:38:54 PM | | Running CPU benchmarks
11-Nov-2015 4:38:54 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
11-Nov-2015 4:39:26 PM | | Benchmark results:
11-Nov-2015 4:39:26 PM | | Number of CPUs: 3
11-Nov-2015 4:39:26 PM | | 3279 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
11-Nov-2015 4:39:26 PM | | 8852 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
11-Nov-2015 4:39:27 PM | | Suspending GPU computation - computer is in use
11-Nov-2015 4:44:12 PM | | Resuming GPU computation
11-Nov-2015 4:47:21 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU is busy
11-Nov-2015 4:47:31 PM | | Resuming computation
11-Nov-2015 4:47:42 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU is busy
11-Nov-2015 4:48:02 PM | | Resuming computation
11-Nov-2015 4:48:12 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU is busy
11-Nov-2015 4:48:22 PM | | Resuming computation
11-Nov-2015 4:48:32 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU is busy
11-Nov-2015 4:48:42 PM | | Resuming computation
11-Nov-2015 4:49:03 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU is busy
11-Nov-2015 4:49:13 PM | | Resuming computation
11-Nov-2015 4:54:35 PM | | Suspending GPU computation - computer is in use
11-Nov-2015 5:00:42 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU is busy
11-Nov-2015 5:01:13 PM | | Resuming computation
11-Nov-2015 5:05:09 PM | World Community Grid | update requested by user
11-Nov-2015 5:05:11 PM | World Community Grid | Sending scheduler request: Requested by user.
11-Nov-2015 5:05:11 PM | World Community Grid | Requesting new tasks for CPU and intel_gpu
11-Nov-2015 5:05:15 PM | World Community Grid | Scheduler request failed: Failed writing received data to disk/application
11-Nov-2015 5:05:18 PM | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
11-Nov-2015 5:05:22 PM | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.
11-Nov-2015 5:07:02 PM | World Community Grid | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
11-Nov-2015 5:07:02 PM | World Community Grid | Requesting new tasks for CPU and intel_gpu
11-Nov-2015 5:07:03 PM | World Community Grid | Scheduler request failed: Unrecognized or bad HTTP Content or Transfer-Encoding
11-Nov-2015 5:07:07 PM | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
11-Nov-2015 5:07:08 PM | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.
11-Nov-2015 5:09:58 PM | | Running CPU benchmarks
11-Nov-2015 5:09:58 PM | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress

I'm utterly at a loss to even know what to check to find what the problem is!

11-Nov-2015 5:05:15 PM | World Community Grid | Scheduler request failed: Failed writing received data to disk/application

11-Nov-2015 5:07:03 PM | World Community Grid | Scheduler request failed: Unrecognized or bad HTTP Content or Transfer-Encoding

Best ask at the World Community Grid forums, as it is their scheduler that is giving these answers.

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Okay, thanks Jord. :-)

I did ask one of the developers, because of a feeling of doubt on the messages. Apparently it is libcurl (the multi-protocol file transfer library that BOINC uses) that threw those errors. Either HTTP was corrupted, or the communication between your computer and the server got cut short.

Things to check:
1. Make sure BOINC (boinc.exe) is allowed through your firewall, especially for WCG on TCP 443.
2. Try to reboot the computer and then do the communication again.

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Well, I don't know what caused it to run out a few days ago, but it seems all I needed was to reboot after updating the BOINC software. Running fine now (fingers crossed!).

Thanks again. :-)

Thanks Jord. As I just posted (before I saw your reply), rebooting did seem to correct it. So far so good (knock wood ;-). Mind you, I had just done a Windows update before noticing the problem before, so simply rebooting didn't seem to do the trick. I'm now running 7.2.47, whereas I had been running 7.2.42.

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks and leave the information here in case someone else has the same problem. FWIW I saw some reports (in the WCG forum) of the same problem of BOINC attempting to download 2 .png files, so this is more than just me. Maybe that's the lipcurl issue you mentioned.

Thanks again!