I'm only running the Rosetta project on this machine at the moment. It was properly using my preferences right after the BOINC 5.4.11/Rosetta install. My work preferences stated that it was to suspend operation and stay in memory and only resume after the computer was idle for a given time. I could also manually set it to run always and it would very nicely use only one of the processors on my dual core laptop. But for now I set it back to running based on my preferences.

That night I closed the lid on my laptop putting it into sleep mode (it didn't hibernate as it was plugged into a/c). Likely BOINC was already running by the time I came back to close down the computer. The next morning I opened the laptop and logged in. BOINC requested internet access and I allowed it. Then I opened the manager and check its status -and found it running instead of suspended! Opening the TaskManager showed it was running 100% on BOTH processors. My guess is that the app was forceably put to sleep by WinXP media center and on resume it failed to recognize that the computer was now in use. I had to manually suspend BOINC to stop it from hogging all the computer resources. Next I shutdown the app and then restarted it. It went right back to 100% usage on both processors. It's as if my preferences have been overwritten. Updating from Rosetta in an attempt to force reset my preferences had no effect either.

Noticed something new in my messages queue. Ok guys this is a pain. I can't copy/paste from the messages list in BOINC. Grrr. Manual copying -oh joy.
rosetta@home 9/26/2006 3:56:13pm URL:http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/; Computer ID: 313069; location: work; project prefs: default
9/26/2006 3:56:13pm General prefs: from http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ (last modified 2005-12-21 22:23:54)
9/26/2006 3:56:13pm General prefs: using your defaults
9/26/2006 3:56:13pm Local control only allowed

So even though I've never run the einstein project on this computer, it somehow knows about it and appears to load its default prefs AFTER rosetta, very likely overwriting them. Huh? The default profile for Einstein does allow for running wide-open even while the computer is in use. So the problem seems to be why is BOINC using these prefs in the first place?

I just went and changed the default prefs at Einstein but my guess is that these prefs are only looked at when BOINC first starts up, because running an update on the Rosetta project still had no effect. So next I went and changed the default prefs at Rosetta to match the work prefs I had setup there. Remember, under account status, it shows my laptop is using my work prefs. Again I updated the project and now the Rosetta project properly suspends its tasks due to user activity. WRONG! It worked but it shouldn't have as my laptop shouldn't be using the default prefs. For now I have a better solution -BOINC has now been temporarily removed from my computer startup for being an aggravating pain in the butt.

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