Seti@home installed on 4xCPU AMD Athlon II, not doing much

Message boards : Questions and problems : Seti@home installed on 4xCPU AMD Athlon II, not doing much
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ginetta

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Joined: 6 Dec 16
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United Kingdom
Message 74632 - Posted: 6 Dec 2016, 21:36:49 UTC

I recently went back to Seti@home after many years, now it's on BOINC, so I installed it (v8 8.0 on 64 bit AMD Athlon II X4 640 processor 3.00Ghz 8Gb RAM, Windows 7 home premium). There are 4 processes running, but don't seem to use much compute power. Every time I look it seems to be "Suspended - CPU is busy". Typical CPU usage is 25%, 4.5Gn memory usage. Only thing running unattended is typically Microsoft Live Mail. After 12 days (and very idle nights) it's got as far as 21%, 26%, 75%, 23%. Surely it should be motoring! I've looked at the preferences but the only thing checked is "suspend if on batteries", which I'm not. Any thoughts?
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Profile Joseph Stateson
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Message 74634 - Posted: 6 Dec 2016, 21:45:27 UTC - in response to Message 74632.  

Are you using the screen saver option? If running all the time check that the threshold for 'non boinc cpu" busy is %90, not %25 and / or set number of cores to use at %75 so one is always a 'non boinc" core.

HTH
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Juha
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Message 74645 - Posted: 7 Dec 2016, 15:00:25 UTC - in response to Message 74632.  

You may want to check what's using that 25% CPU (or one core). If it's svchost.exe it's probably Windows Update and in that case either keep the computer running until the update is complete (may take days) or download and install the latest update package manually.
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ginetta

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Message 74653 - Posted: 7 Dec 2016, 17:18:02 UTC - in response to Message 74634.  

Seti@home screen saver option not being used, just use windows "mystify". Not sure what you mean by 'non boinc cpu' and 'number of cores' as I don't see an option for them. Where would they be?
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ginetta

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Message 74654 - Posted: 7 Dec 2016, 17:19:17 UTC - in response to Message 74645.  

Typically windows spreads the usage across all 4 CPUs not just one
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Profile Jord
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Message 74656 - Posted: 7 Dec 2016, 17:31:23 UTC - in response to Message 74653.  

Computing preferences (example image) or local preferences:

Use at most N % of the CPUs: Keeps some CPUs free for other applications. Example: 75% means use 6 cores on an 8-core CPU.

Suspend when non-BOINC CPU usage is above N %: Suspend computing when your computer is busy running other programs. When activated a hi-load pause will be a minimum of 10 seconds before computing resumes.


Local preferences override web preferences.
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robsmith
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Message 74658 - Posted: 7 Dec 2016, 17:47:37 UTC

Hi Ginetta, sorry to read about your problems, and that you are struggling to understand some of the terminology used.
First, I assume you are running BOINC version 7.6.22 (the current "live" version). BOINC is sort of "operating system" that runs on Windows, and allows you to run projects like SETI@Home and is essential for them to run - sounds far worse than it really is!

Did you "attach" to SETI@Home? as a project using the "tools - add project" or the "add project" button? Either way you should have either created a new account, or re-used your old one.

OK, so, if you have your SETI@Home account name, what is it - I can's find one called "ginetta" (with or without a capital first letter) - that could be the stumbling block!
Sometime located elsewhere in the (un)known Universe
But most often found somewhere near the middle of the UK
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Message boards : Questions and problems : Seti@home installed on 4xCPU AMD Athlon II, not doing much

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