Boinc has stopped working properly after I changed my graphics card and installed new drivers. My previous card was a Radeon HD4670, the new one is a GeForce GTS250. Now, the Boinc Manager is just showing "Retrieving current status", and it will do so for hours. Nothing else is changed on the PC, and this happened immediately after having installed the new card. Reinstalling Boinc doesn't help, not even if I delete traces in the \All Users\Application Data folder. This PC runs Win XP (32).
Got any ideas?

Perhaps you'll have to delete all traces of the ATI drivers.

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

How to completely clean out drivers of GPUs you do not use anymore?

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Perhaps you'll have to delete all traces of the ATI drivers.

Gruß,
Gundolf

I've used Driver Sweeper to remove what's left of the ATI graphics drivers. But since it's an AMD 780-type mainboard, some south bridge drivers and the Catalyst install utility is left.
What's even more strange, is that the Boinc Manager suddenly managed to connect yesterday, after about five or six hours of trying to retrieve. But today the problem is back..

By the way, I don't really see how it could be driver related. The manager should be able to connect regardless. But Boinc was running fine until the moment I switched graphics cards, and no other changes were made to the system. I've also checked that there a no firewall or network settings that could cause it, but I might have missed or forgotten something. And as I said, it worked again yesterday, but not today.

Can you please download and install 6.10.58 and run with that? It's a development version yes, but it's got some GPU crash detection code included.

How come a missing GPU can cause all these problems?
When BOINC starts up it will check if a certain library file is on your system, this file comes with the videocard's drivers. When you remove hardware but not the drivers, BOINC will find the driver and start to try to detect the GPU. While this detection is going on, it won't be able to connect to BOINC Manager, too busy throwing RPCs out trying to find your GPU.

But there are plenty of other causes why the client and the GUI can't connect.
Which firewall do you use?
Are you behind a proxy?
Which anti-virus and does it actively scan starting programs?

What happens when you first start boinc.exe and after a minute or so BOINC Manager?

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Can you please download and install 6.10.58 and run with that? It's a development version yes, but it's got some GPU crash detection code included.

How come a missing GPU can cause all these problems?
When BOINC starts up it will check if a certain library file is on your system, this file comes with the videocard's drivers. When you remove hardware but not the drivers, BOINC will find the driver and start to try to detect the GPU. While this detection is going on, it won't be able to connect to BOINC Manager, too busy throwing RPCs out trying to find your GPU.

But there are plenty of other causes why the client and the GUI can't connect.
Which firewall do you use?
Are you behind a proxy?
Which anti-virus and does it actively scan starting programs?

What happens when you first start boinc.exe and after a minute or so BOINC Manager?

I'll try installing the 6.10.58.
I just tried with an ATI card (HD5670) again, and Boinc worked fine. So it's got to be driver related after all, unless there's something wrong with my GeForce GPU. Nvidia just issued new GeForce drivers (258.96), so I'll try installing those first, and see what happens.
Thanks for the explanation :-)

Updating the drivers had no effect, but it seems to run fine now that I've installed the 6.10.58. Thanks, Ageless :-)

I run a 9800GTX+ and a HD5770 on my Windows 7 Desktop, the last Catalyst driver that works in this configuration is Cat 10.2, anything newer causes the Boinc client to crash,

Claggy

I run a 9800GTX+ and a HD5770 on my Windows 7 Desktop, the last Catalyst driver that works in this configuration is Cat 10.2, anything newer causes the Boinc client to crash,

Claggy

The 9800GTX+ has the same GPU as the GTS250 (Nvidia just renamed it (again)) btw. Never had any problems with the ATI drivers, I usually update drivers monthly. Running Boinc fine on my HD3450/5670/4770/4870 (Win7 and Vista x64), with the 10.6 drivers.
My GTS250 worked fine with Boinc on Win7-64, only had probs with this card on a XP system. But it works fine now, with the 6.10.58.