Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of WindowsIssues

Timestamp:

Apr 29, 2014, 5:02:35 PM (10 years ago)

Author:

davea

Comment:

--

WindowsIssues

@@ +1 @@
+= Windows Issue =
+
+== Don't compute while movie playing ==
+
+Problem: while a movie is playing there's no mouse/kbd input,
+and CPU usage can be low,
+so BOINC starts computing, possibly with GPU,
+and the playback is messed up.
+
+How does BOINC know if a movie is playing?
+This was asked here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1154923/detect-movie-being-played-windows
+and the only answer was: make a list of video players,
+and see if any of them is running.
+That approach has many drawbacks.
+
+Rom thinks there's a Windows API that media players call to tell the system
+not to start a screensaver.
+If we could read this flag, we could not compute when it's set.
+
+The !SystemParametersInfo() API has some stuff related to screensavers:
+http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724947%28VS.85%29.aspx
+but it seems to be just whether the user has registered a screensaver
+(not whether it's eligible to run).
+
+== Don't turn on the fan ==
+
+People don't like it when BOINC makes their fan go on high,
+especially if it pulses because of CPU throttling.
+
+I think a good default policy would be to limit CPU usage
+(by # of cores and/or throttling) to keep from raising the fan speed.
+There are many possible policies.
+For any of them we need to be able to read the fan(s) speeds.
+
+Some possibly relevant stuff:
+
+ACPI
+http://www.acpi.info/
+
+Windows Management Instrumentation:
+http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/Dn614028(v=vs.85).aspx
+
+Fan management tools
+http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php