I am running Boinc 5.8.15 on an IBM 1858B11 laptop, windows xp professional with SETI and Einstein projects and am having difficulty with running the Boinc screen saver. I set it as my default during installation. When the screen saver comes on after the 1 min idle period, the Boinc logo appears bouncing around stating "screen saver loading" for a brief period followed by a very short display of the project's graphics (approx 1-2 sec). It appears to me that the screen saver is being seen as activity (like moving the mouse or playing a dvd) and it immediately closes after it opens. If anyone has any insight on this problem i would greatly appreciate a response. Thanks.


-Ender

Yes, BOINC can see the screen saver as activity, if the CPU is used for calculating said screen saver. This is a quite normal thing for on board video chips. They do not have their own graphics processor, so they turn to the CPU for doing the necessary calculations. And that's perceived by BOINC as activity.

They only viable way around this is to not use the BOINC screen saver.

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BOINC checks CPU usage to know what is Activity? I thought it checked mouse/keyboard input...

Yes, BOINC can see the screen saver as activity, if the CPU is used for calculating said screen saver. This is a quite normal thing for on board video chips. They do not have their own graphics processor, so they turn to the CPU for doing the necessary calculations. And that's perceived by BOINC as activity.

They only viable way around this is to not use the BOINC screen saver.

I have a Matrox Millennium G400 card in my desktop and I have the EXACT same problem.

I have a Matrox Millennium G400 card in my desktop and I have the EXACT same problem.

Do you use Dual-screen? As the G400 can't show OpenGL to both monitors at the same time. It's not capable of that as it only has one RAMDAC that outputs to both VGA connectors.

(/me looks at his G400 Max catching dust on the shelf ;))

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Do you use Dual-screen? As the G400 can't show OpenGL to both monitors at the same time. It's not capable of that as it only has one RAMDAC that outputs to both VGA connectors.

(/me looks at his G400 Max catching dust on the shelf ;))

Nope. It's my "second system". So just a single lowly Iiyama Vision Master Pro17. Sniffle.

My primary development system/laptop does have a second monitor next to the up-right laptop stand/docking station... How DID we get by with only one monitor on a development machine for decades?!?