I have for years enjoyed running seti@home and recently recieved notice that I must switch over to the BOINC software to continue to do so. I downloaded the highest version number client just before Thanksgiving (5.2.8) and have tried to run it for seti@home at default settings. However, every time I return to my computer after BOINC has run, the system hangs and then crashes to the BIOS soon after (the kind of crash where windows XP boots up saying the system has recovered from a serious error). I am certain BOINC is the cause because my system had no instability problems before installing BOINC, and I have been operating for the past week without running BOINC and had no crashes. Additionally, every time I permit BOINC to run as my screen saver, my system ALWAYS crashed within minutes of stopping the screen saver. My system is set never to go into sleep mode, so that cannot be a factor. It only runs a screen saver when idle. I suspect there may be a problem with how BOINC operates the system RAM or something because the crash usually occurs as I begin opening applications. The applications don't seem to be the problem (things like Internet Explorer and MS Word) because the system only hangs if BOINC recently ran. There have been no instability problems when I have not permitted BOINC to run.

So what is going wrong? Is there a bug? Do I have something set improperly in the options? I very much want to continue to help projects like SETI, but not at the cost of an eventual hard drive reformat or failure.

I downloaded the highest version number client just before Thanksgiving (5.2.8) and have tried to run it for seti@home at default settings.

It's up to 5.2.13 now. If you have any connectivity or networking issues it would pay to go to the latest as they seem to have finished the current round of bugfixes. Basically, stop BOINC and confirm stopped, install "over the top", and then restart BOINC. All work in progress will be preserved.

However, every time I return to my computer after BOINC has run, the system hangs and then crashes to the BIOS soon after

Not really sure what you mean here. I've looked you up at Seti and you have quite a list of successful results with no signs of client errors. If BOINC were crashing your machine I would expect to see some "Client errors" in your results list. When you say "after BOINC has run ..." do you mean that everything is OK while BOINC is running but if you stop BOINC then soon afterwards, the machine crashes? If so, I've never seen that before. Can you capture any unusual messages from your BOINC Manager message window? How do you start and stop BOINC? Can you give a lot more detail on how you use your machine and what is actually going on just before the crash?

So what is going wrong? Is there a bug? Do I have something set improperly in the options? I very much want to continue to help projects like SETI, but not at the cost of an eventual hard drive reformat or failure.

I've not seen anyone else describe problems like yours and I'd be surprised if it actually is a bug in BOINC. I think it's more likely to be some sort of hardware issue under load. Can you try some other system stressing software like Prime95 to see if your machine really is stable?

---

Cheers,
Gary.

I downloaded the highest version number client just before Thanksgiving (5.2.8) and have tried to run it for seti@home at default settings.

It's up to 5.2.13 now. If you have any connectivity or networking issues it would pay to go to the latest as they seem to have finished the current round of bugfixes. Basically, stop BOINC and confirm stopped, install "over the top", and then restart BOINC. All work in progress will be preserved.

However, every time I return to my computer after BOINC has run, the system hangs and then crashes to the BIOS soon after

Not really sure what you mean here. I've looked you up at Seti and you have quite a list of successful results with no signs of client errors. If BOINC were crashing your machine I would expect to see some "Client errors" in your results list. When you say "after BOINC has run ..." do you mean that everything is OK while BOINC is running but if you stop BOINC then soon afterwards, the machine crashes? If so, I've never seen that before. Can you capture any unusual messages from your BOINC Manager message window? How do you start and stop BOINC? Can you give a lot more detail on how you use your machine and what is actually going on just before the crash?

So what is going wrong? Is there a bug? Do I have something set improperly in the options? I very much want to continue to help projects like SETI, but not at the cost of an eventual hard drive reformat or failure.

I've not seen anyone else describe problems like yours and I'd be surprised if it actually is a bug in BOINC. I think it's more likely to be some sort of hardware issue under load. Can you try some other system stressing software like Prime95 to see if your machine really is stable?

Well, here there is someone else that has the same problem. I have found the same message regarding Windows has recovered from a critical erro. And even worse, on time the machine did not boot. Some file was corrupted and when Windows started bootinggot into a sort of loop rebooting continuously. I needed to repair the disk using the Windows CD recovery console, and after that reinstall Windows, fortunutely I did not lost data (at least that I noticed).

Two more time after shting down the system normally, when turning it on, I got a blue screen indicating press any key to boot, and this keep on happening. Once again the only solution was to use the recovery console chkdsk /p to make the system to boot properly.

The third way it chrashed was witha blue screen stating the system hasfound a stack error (a something like that) and Windows stoped to avoid further damaged. The system was doing a memory dump when I found the problem.

My computer is based on a motherboard ASUS, Pentium IV 1,8 Gig and 512 MB DDR RAM, it has a primary 40 Gig HD with 11.2 Gig free and a secondary 30 Gig HD. Windows XP Home with all the patches (yes I reinstall all of them after reinstalling Windows, luckly I have high speed internet)

so far I did not have any problem. It also happens to me after the sceen saver work, and particularly after my daughter plays on line games.

Any clue?

Thank you,

Rafael

---

It also happens to me after the sceen saver work, and particularly after my daughter plays on line games.

You don't say what projects you are attached to, or if you have noticed that one particular screensaver is related to the issue - but there are several possibilities, or at least things to check. (I personally don't think the problem is BOINC-related, as I've seen similar cases too many times where BOINC wasn't installed at all, and if there were some major bug in BOINC, with a quarter of a million Windows installs, I think it'd be more obvious...)

1) If the problem happens when the Einstein screensaver is running, and you have an ATI graphics board, there is a known bug that causes Einstein WU errors. No reports of it affecting Windows however, unless the crash is in the graphics card drivers (generally requires them to be several versions "behind" current).

2) One easy way to determine if the screensaver is contributing/causing the problem - turn off the screensaver! Use some simple boring one, or even "blank". See if problem continues.

3) If problem does continue without the screensaver, remove BOINC from the list of startup items. Run without it for a couple of days and see if you still have the problem. If not, begin running BOINC manually after startup, and exiting it before doing anything "heavy" (games, etc.) and see if you begin having it. Finally, still starting it manually, let it run continuously, and see if problems resume.

If you can narrow down the cause to a certain combination of "BOINC was doing this", we can possibly figure out how to solve the problem. Or, if the answer is "oops, BOINC had nothing to do with it", then you will have a direction to look to see where the true problem is.

---

I find that it is advisable to restart my computers after playing EverQuest. They tend to get flaky if I don't. Due to this I have made it the policy on my home net to restart the computer when finished rather than just logging off.

---

BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

It also happens to me after the sceen saver work, and particularly after my daughter plays on line games.

You don't say what projects you are attached to, or if you have noticed that one particular screensaver is related to the issue - but there are several possibilities, or at least things to check. (I personally don't think the problem is BOINC-related, as I've seen similar cases too many times where BOINC wasn't installed at all, and if there were some major bug in BOINC, with a quarter of a million Windows installs, I think it'd be more obvious...)

1) If the problem happens when the Einstein screensaver is running, and you have an ATI graphics board, there is a known bug that causes Einstein WU errors. No reports of it affecting Windows however, unless the crash is in the graphics card drivers (generally requires them to be several versions "behind" current).

2) One easy way to determine if the screensaver is contributing/causing the problem - turn off the screensaver! Use some simple boring one, or even "blank". See if problem continues.

3) If problem does continue without the screensaver, remove BOINC from the list of startup items. Run without it for a couple of days and see if you still have the problem. If not, begin running BOINC manually after startup, and exiting it before doing anything "heavy" (games, etc.) and see if you begin having it. Finally, still starting it manually, let it run continuously, and see if problems resume.

If you can narrow down the cause to a certain combination of "BOINC was doing this", we can possibly figure out how to solve the problem. Or, if the answer is "oops, BOINC had nothing to do with it", then you will have a direction to look to see where the true problem is.

More info:

The projects I was running were: SETI and Climate Change

BOINC was not running as a service, some times the problem showed after turning the machine off. The area more commonly affected was always the hard drive boot area.

The problem apparently appeared also when the system was running several applications at the same time (I guess the system did not stand the overload, but I have never had a problem like that, even when I was running SETI@HOME for long time, and for a long time I was also participating in a study the protein folding for the Alzheimer)

Last Sunday I uninstalled BOINC, since then the computer has worked without any kind of problem. Before, there was no a single time I started the machine without problems, always problems when booting.

The problem was so bad that I almost bought a new drive in "Boxing Day", because I thought the problem was due to a dying hard drive.

For sure it is not only BOINC fault, but without any doubt, there is a particular mix of hardware or software that makes BOINC to corrupt my hard drive. I would love to keep donating my wasted computer power, but I was getting scared of loosing the information on the hard drive, and my family was getting upset with me, because the computer was more time out of order than working. Honestly, after several installations of different flavours of LINUX, it is very easy for my family to trace the origin of the computer problems to something I did or change :-)

If somebody is interested in understanding the problem, I have no problem in upload logs or other files that might interest.

I can even try to install another version of BOINC (but please do not tell to my wife ;-). I do not want to waste computer power if there is something useful to do.

Rafael

---

Boinc screensaver also crashes one of my systems. It works fine on others.

The problem system uses is built with:
Abit AN7 system board with nVidia nForce2 chipset
AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (Palomino)- not overclocked
1.5GB DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9550 video card

This system has always had video stability issues. This is the second video card as the original one had a BIOS conflict with the system board. My best guess is that there is a 3D rendering issue.

The screensaver comes on and runs with no issues. But once the video goes to power off after any period of time, I cannot bring the video back up. If I hit a key to revive the machine it is just stuck on a black screen. The monitor powers back up as I have a constant green power light on the monitor (it flashes green in power save mode), but it just shows a black screen. If I hit space bar a few times more the machine reboots after about three miniutes. All open apps are lost.

Boinc has no issues if I allow it to run without the screensaver.

ATI Radeon 9550 video card
This system has always had video stability issues. This is the second video card as the original one had a BIOS conflict with the system board. My best guess is that there is a 3D rendering issue.
The screensaver comes on and runs with no issues. But once the video goes to power off after any period of time, I cannot bring the video back up. If I hit a key to revive the machine it is just stuck on a black screen. The monitor powers back up as I have a constant green power light on the monitor (it flashes green in power save mode), but it just shows a black screen. If I hit space bar a few times more the machine reboots after about three miniutes. All open apps are lost.
Boinc has no issues if I allow it to run without the screensaver.

Jeff,

You might try checking to determine if your ATI drivers are up-to-date. Start by reading this thread. If you find that your drivers are seriously out-of-date, use the Catalyst driver removal tool found at the ATI site, and download and install a newer driver. Unless you have installed MS .NET framewoark, I'd suggest you settle for drivers from no later than November 2005. Hope you get your joy here. :-)

Michael

---

"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Justice"

Boinc screensaver also crashes one of my systems. It works fine on others.

The problem system uses is built with:
Abit AN7 system board with nVidia nForce2 chipset
AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (Palomino)- not overclocked
1.5GB DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9550 video card

This system has always had video stability issues. This is the second video card as the original one had a BIOS conflict with the system board. My best guess is that there is a 3D rendering issue.

The screensaver comes on and runs with no issues. But once the video goes to power off after any period of time, I cannot bring the video back up. If I hit a key to revive the machine it is just stuck on a black screen. The monitor powers back up as I have a constant green power light on the monitor (it flashes green in power save mode), but it just shows a black screen. If I hit space bar a few times more the machine reboots after about three miniutes. All open apps are lost.

Boinc has no issues if I allow it to run without the screensaver.

My pc does not go out of "screen saver" hitting any key too
However when I move the mouse , its black screen disapears almost immediately
board kt7vt2 video card geforce2 mx400

How about using the default screen saver instead ?
*this one does not use graphics and should not end on graphics card compatibility issues

---

Click signature for team stats

My pc does not go out of "screen saver" hitting any key too
However when I move the mouse , its black screen disapears almost immediately
board kt7vt2 video card geforce2 mx400

How about using the default screen saver instead ?
*this one does not use graphics and should not end on graphics card compatibility issues

Carlos,

The best performance and stability can be yours, if you set the screensaver option to "none".

Michael

---

"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Justice"

I am with Michael on this one, the screen saver is not worth the hassle, just turn it off in windows, set your screen to go blank after 5 mins and if you need a graphics fix just use the graphics tab in Boinc....In a year and a half I have never used the screen saver and do not miss it one bit, plus my computer just works better.....

---

BOINC Wiki

OK. I set my monitor to power off after 5 minutes -> electric bill savings
However, some times, I expend more than 5 minutes reading one page

When I realize that the monitor was powered off is too late
and I lost 4-6 seconds waiting the tube to heat again.

Thus, I use default screen saver after 4 minutes, and power off after 5 minutes
So, If I expend more than 4 minutes reading a page, the screen goes black,
but returns immediately , by one hit on cntrl or shift.

If Im away, next minute a power off occurs

I believe this way I am preserving cathodic ray tube life,
and not losing my time waiting it heats again, after power off

ps: my HD is set to never spin down
-> a replacement HD costs more than the electric bill -:)
and with that too many spin down/up it ends with a head crash

---

Click signature for team stats

I just bought a new system. Asus p5n32 motherboard, Intel Core 2 duo 2.4, GeForce 8800 GTS, 2GB 800Mhz RAM, running Windows XP Pro with all the updates. My system always CRASHES when I run Boinc and SETI. I have tried it with and with out screen saver. I have let the system just sit running only normal background programs (Norton anti-virus, etc.) and it still crashes my system. If I shut down Boinc my system will run just fine with no errors. Can you help?

I have run SETI for many years and Boinc from its beginning. Before crashing my new system does a great job of processing work units.

Thanks Luke

Does it run Prime95's torture test OK? (approx 24hours testing needed). This will at least pin down the approximate area of the trouble (hardware vs. software).

---

Thanks Mike. Found out me new ram was bad. I replaced it with some G. Skill and is working great now. Thanks for the help.