LHC@home

Using BOINC 6.10.56 in Windows 7 x46, Intel i7 with 6 GB RAM. I receive work packages but they never finish. They seem to presume a calculation time of around 2:30h, when this time has been reached they continue to count up elapsed time endlessly, but no CPU is being used. I know have 8 jobs running for LHC@HOME and no CPU usages. Elapsed is 1:30-3:04h, Progress 100% except for the first that has 0.001%. To completetion is '---' for all except the first that has 8:00h. The first job has been running for several days though. CPU is being consumed during the hour or so, then no CPU usage.
I've not clicked 'Show graphics' as I have read earlier about problems (button is infact grayed out here).
I have tried 'Reset project' but the behaviour is back immediately.
Is this a bug? Contant me for more detailed information if needed. I can provide screen shoots etc.

I am seeing the same behavior on two of my machines. One is a relatively old dual Athlon MP box running Windows XP, and the other is a fairly new HP notebook with a Core2 Duo running Vista. They have literally nothing in common except that every LHC task they have run in the last year or so seems to complete (or terminate early in the normal manner) but never actually exit and upload. CPU use drops to 0% and the task remains in the \\\"Running\\\" state indefinitely until aborted. I have tried everything I can think of to correct this, but so far nothing has worked.

For comparison, this is an even older dual Pentium III box that runs without a hitch. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-- Tony D.

Update...

I did a little digging and found this thread in the Sixtrack topic of the Questions and Answers forum. No explanation is given as to why, but apparently some computers have a problem running the SixTrack app under BOINC 6.x.x. (The thread refers to SixTrack 4.67, but clearly the issue persists in the current version 4209.00.) The solution is to downgrade to a 5.x.x version of the BOINC client. The one I found on the download page is 5.8.16, which did in fact solve the problem on my Athlon MP computer. The HP is at my parents\' house; I\'ll try the downgrade on it next time I\'m over there.

To anyone else who wishes to try this: Remember that BOINC 6.x.x introduced a new directory structure under Windows (don\\\'t know about the other OSes). When you downgrade back to a 5.x.x, you will have to copy the contents of C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Application Data\\BOINC into C:\\Program Files\\BOINC so the older core client will be able to find all the necessary files. Oh, and you should back up both BOINC folders and uninstall your 6.x.x client before installing 5.6.18. I\'m not sure what would happen if one were to install a 5.x.x client over top of a 6.x.x client. You\'ll give up some features - most notably GPU support - but it\'s either that or detach from LHC@Home until this mysterious bug in Sixtrack is fixed.


-- Tony D.

Thanks for the reply Tony. Since I have upgraded to latest version and this time installed using the special rights option for UAC hoping the no-end problem would be due to unability to write a state file or something similar. As it turns out I can now receive and correctly return results! I do not know if anything else has changed, but Vista/Win7 users might wan\'t to reinstall BOINC granting it full rights for lhc@home to work.

Thanks for the reply Tony. Since I have upgraded to latest version and this time installed using the special rights option for UAC hoping the no-end problem would be due to unability to write a state file or something similar. As it turns out I can now receive and correctly return results! I do not know if anything else has changed, but Vista/Win7 users might wan\\\'t to reinstall BOINC granting it full rights for lhc@home to work.

You\'re welcome! I\'m glad to hear you got it straightened out. Good point about the User Account Control (UAC) feature in Vista/Win7. I never though to play around with the UAC settings on my Vista laptop. There\'s no UAC in WinXP, so I\'m still at a loss to explain why my other PC is having this issue. Still, as neither of those computers are CUDA-capable, I can live with BOINC 5.10.45 (replaced 5.8.16) for a little while longer.

I should also point out that the BOINC data directory I gave in my other post applies to WinXP only. On Vista/Win7 machines, the corresponding folder is C:\\\\ProgramData\\\\BOINC. Apologies for the omission.


-- Tony D.