I'm trying to get access for my University's new PC lab to work on BOINC (because right now, the machines are all idle and....

Anyway, he age old dillema: install as a service and have BOINC run without the need to have a person logged in, or only run it when someone is logged, but making use of the GPU.

From my extensive google browsing, this has been a problem, and to date, with no solution; however, I've seen a user claim (somewhere...) that versions 7.3.XX and higher have some kind of support for the feature, but I haven't seen any documentation about it anywhere else. Is it true?

Question number 2, is it possible to make a dual install, or dual config, or really any kind of sorcery, so that you can have BOINC crunching on CPU only when nobody is logged, but have access to the GPU once someone logs in?

Last question: does anyone know if F@H has support for any of these features? I'm not very good with F@H, all I know about is BOINC.


I mean, don't get me wrong, if I'm forced to choose, I'm pretty sure that the 16 threads Xeons take priority over the "weak" quadro cards. But if I can use both, I'd love to blow up the fuses of the building.. er, help the science a bit further.

Is it true?

It's not true. It's not something that BOINC can fix either, if it needs a fix it is something that Microsoft has to do. Microsoft has decided to run the services in their own session. This means that when BOINC is running as a service that it cannot reach the drivers for the videocard that are running under your user account. Thus no detection possible.

Question number 2, is it possible to make a dual install, or dual config, or really any kind of sorcery, so that you can have BOINC crunching on CPU only when nobody is logged, but have access to the GPU once someone logs in?

No, just because of that problem of the drivers running in a different session from the services. The service installation will not all of a sudden be able to detect the drivers when a user logs in. While the user installation will not run when no one is logged in.

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No, just because of that problem of the drivers running in a different session from the services. The service installation will not all of a sudden be able to detect the drivers when a user logs in. While the user installation will not run when no one is logged in.

I meant more in the sense of having 2 different installations (the service and the regular all-users one) side by side. Possible?

No, and this time because everything about the BOINC installations is being written into the registry. Also whether it's a service install or a user install.

Well, it's probably possible if you install BOINC as one, and then use the /a (administrative install) option on the installer to unpack everything into a separate directory. But this may become very messy very quickly.

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It is possible to use GPUs in service mode, provided both these conditions are true:

1) the Windows version is XP (nothing later)
2) the BOINC version is 6.12.34 (nothing later)

You can always control (2), but I doubt that your "University's new PC lab" is still running XP. So, no, it's not possible, and that's the Microsoft security restriction Jord was describing.

It is possible to use GPUs in service mode, provided both these conditions are true:

1) the Windows version is XP (nothing later)
2) the BOINC version is 6.12.34 (nothing later)

You can always control (2), but I doubt that your "University's new PC lab" is still running XP. So, no, it's not possible, and that's the Microsoft security restriction Jord was describing.

That's.... something. I guess.

If I could only dual-boot, I would... install Linux. Yea.... Actually, the machines were requested to be dual bootable by some of the teachers, but it either isn't happening, or it isn't enabled yet.