I noticed that all new tasks are set to "Low" Priority in the Windows Task Manager under the "services" Tab. This is a problem on 2 of my 5 PC's, since they often run other software concurrent with BOINC. The other software hogs all the CPU time, since it's service(s) are set to "Normal" priority.

Is there a way that a new BOINC task can start it's service with "Normal" priority?

Floont

The whole point to running the BOINC project tasks at low priority, is just that - to allow "other" work to take over when you start it.
This way, BOINC and the science apps ONLY use SPARE cpu cycles to do their crunching.

Perhaps I should have explained that most of the machines I use are damaged in some way and are not used for day-to-day activities. For instance, I have two laptops (1 dual core, 1 single) that have no working display (one has bad video hardware on the motherboard and the other literally has no display and a broken keyboard). Normally these machines would be sent to the scrap heap, but their processors are quite powerful and BOINC as well as other CPU intensive applications have breathed new life into them, making them useful once more. I created an unattended minimal install CD of Windows that sets them up as a remote machine. Then I remote into them from a good laptop, install BOINC and set them running.

In our throw-away society, I wanted to make these former "door-stops" into useful devices once again. I have been quite successful except for the "priority" problem. Currently, I change must change the priority to "Normal" manually after remoting in. BOINC applications run much better on these crippled machines in normal priority since they have nothing else to do.

Thank you for the Project Lasso reference. I will investigate.

FA

Process Lasso works great! After defining the specific Boinc tasks a "normal" priority and some other well-chosen services to below-normal, Process Lasso forces them to that priority unless "responsiveness is affected, then it will dynamically lower the priority of the task causing the slow response and will return it back to the programmed priority when the response issue has past. On two of my machines (one with dual CPU's), the completion rate for BOINC tasks has improved dramatically.

Thanks you Sekerob!

FA