Claggy - No tasks start because as soon as I launch Boinc I get Communication message that never goes away. The message comes up before any tasks appear in the Boinc Manager.

I said Boinc.exe, NOT Boinc Manager (boincmgr.exe).

Boinc is made up of three programs, Boinc.exe (aka the Boinc client), this does all the work,
and Boinc Manager (the GUI program), this starts Boinc.exe, then connects to Boinc.exe, and displays/controls what Boinc.exe does, and doesn't have to be running for work to progress,
and Boinctray.exe, this monitors Mouse and keyboard activity for suspending CPU/GPU use, etc.

If you trawl around to C:\Program Files\BOINC and try starting Boinc.exe, what happens?, do any project apps start? (Watch Task Manager)

Claggy

When I try to start boinc.exe all I get is a window with a blinking cursor, and after about 10 seconds it goes away.

And yes, it does show in the Task Manager.

And yes, it does show in the Task Manager.

Do any project apps start?, like 'setiathome_6.03_windows_intelx86.exe' ?

Claggy

Claggy - NOTHING starts. I launch Boinc. I get the "Communicating..." message. It never goes away. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Boinc three times, and I still get only the "Communicating..." message. Help!

Please try what? Turning off "Show all tasks"? I can't - Boinc never gets that far. As soon as it is launched I get the Communication message and I can't do anything else.

You can, if you look back at the FAQ I pointed out to you earlier in this thread. Let me quote:

Um... but I pressed the "Show all tasks" button and now I can't get it to reverse. There's no time to press the button again.

On Windows:

Exit BOINC Manager.
Start->Run, type regedit, click OK.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Manager\Tasks and change the value of ActiveTasksOnly from 0 to 1.
Then start BOINC Manager. Changes are immediate.

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When I try to start boinc.exe all I get is a window with a blinking cursor, and after about 10 seconds it goes away.

When i start Boinc.exe, i get what is normally displayed in the Messages tab in the DOS window, and in Task Manager i get a Cuda app, an ATI app, and two CPU apps start,

I suspect it's your client_state.xml file that's got corrupted, Boinc.exe can't make any sense of it and closes/crashes,

So first things first, Make a Backup of your whole Boinc Data directory, and put it somewhere safe, then try restoring client_state.xml from client_state_prev.xml, if that doesn't work, try restoring client_state.xml from client_state_old.xml,
you'll probably loose a few or a lot of Wu's with this approach, so it might be better to wait for Ageless to comment first.

Claggy

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Boinc three times, and I still get only the "Communicating..." message. Help!

Since uninstalling only gets rid of the BOINC executables and nothing more, I doubt you're going to get it fixed this way.

What you can try, if you do not mind reading another FAQ and following all the steps therein, is totally uninstall BOINC and reinstall it clean.

So first things first, Make a Backup of your whole Boinc Data directory, and put it somewhere safe, then try restoring client_state.xml from client_state_prev.xml, if that doesn't work, try restoring client_state.xml from client_state_old.xml, you'll probably loose a few or a lot of Wu's with this approach, so it might be better to wait for Ageless to comment first.

Despite BOINC making a backup of the client state file at startup, it isn't very much helpful for clearing out problems like this. Whenever boinc.exe starts up it immediately makes a backup of the present client state file to client_state_prev, so one can assume that if the client state file was corrupted somehow, that the backup is now also compromised.

So just follow the advice above. To the letter.

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Ageless - Problem Solved!!!

I think that the mistake I made before was after running Uninstall, I didn't delete all the remaining Boinc files. This time I did delete them and all is well.

Thanks again, to all for your help.

Michael

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