Three times this week, I have had problems with this machine, (Intel quad core, Windows XP), with disk thrashing. When this happens, the machine is pretty much useless, it takes forever to load the task manager to find out what is going on. I thought at first it was Poem@Home, but suspending Poem only seemed to stop the problem for a short while, releasing it again, the thrashing did not restart. Later, I did the same with Cosmology@Home, same result. Conclusion, probably coincidence. The BOINC tasks run at low priority, but tasks like sqlservr, (etc.), do not. Something "undesirable" is occurring here. I also see quite a lot of Windows Idle Process "activity" when this is happening.

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Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

adrianxw, you should also include important information like: BOINC version, Event Log, Projects (and the apps selected) that you are attached to, etc...

If there is a bug, then knowing this information is rather important.

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I'd also like to know things as memory use, disk space etc. So why not post the BOINC start up messages of that computer?

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I've also had problems with disk thrashing, slow response, and high CPU usage on Windows machines in recent days.

In my case, the causes were variously svchost.exe (Host Process for Windows Services) - under Windows 7, two instances ('SYSTEM' and 'LOCAL SERVICE') using over a gigabyte of memory each; Malicious Software Removal Tool; and the Realtime Protection component of Microsoft Security Essentials.

I didn't bust a gut looking for contemporary problem reports - just rebooted machines as necessary. My suspicion is that some automatic security updates have had problems recently.

Moral: don't assume that all computer problems are caused by BOINC.

I've also had problems with disk thrashing, slow response, and high CPU usage on Windows machines in recent days.

In my case, the causes were variously svchost.exe (Host Process for Windows Services) - under Windows 7, two instances ('SYSTEM' and 'LOCAL SERVICE') using over a gigabyte of memory each; Malicious Software Removal Tool; and the Realtime Protection component of Microsoft Security Essentials.

I didn't bust a gut looking for contemporary problem reports - just rebooted machines as necessary. My suspicion is that some automatic security updates have had problems recently.

Moral: don't assume that all computer problems are caused by BOINC.

Similar issues on Win Vista within the past week. I opened Process Explorer to see what was causing the slowness... temporarily suspended all BOINC projects and saw a few svchost.exe and associated "Windows" sub-process's using lots of RAM & CPU time. I then shutdown/exited BOINC and rebooted. All was OK after that.

/sarcasm=on Just have to "love" MS Windows at times like this. /sarcasm=off