LHC@home

When the Virtualbox applications run on all or nearly all cores, they lockout other processing, including the keyboard, and other applications.

Can the applications/Virtualbox processing priority be set lower to allow low CPU usage above them (e.g., windows explorer)?

When the Virtualbox applications run on all or nearly all cores, they lockout other processing, including the keyboard, and other applications.

Can the applications/Virtualbox processing priority be set lower to allow low CPU usage above them (e.g., windows explorer)?

It can't be done by BOINC, vboxwrapper or the project.

You have to do it yourself, although lowering the VBoxHeadless processes directly is also not possible.
Oracle (developer of VirtualBox) decided some time ago for security reasons to make that impossible.

There is a work around:
Lower the priority of VBoxSVC.exe. I always set it to "lower than normal" and not the lowest. So above the other BOINC tasks, that normally have the lowest "idle" priority.

After you have set VBoxSVC.exe to "lower than normal", you can start BOINC-VM-tasks.
If you don't see VBoxSVC.exe, because there are no VM's running, start VirtualBox Manager and VBoxSVC.exe will appear.

To automate it a bit you can use Fred Melgert's Priority programme: http://efmer.eu/download/boinc/priority/Priority_1_2.zip

Fred is the programmer of BoincTasks too.

I've been using an app called Process Hacker that keeps a whitelist of apps and the priority you set it at as long as you tag the save option in the right click menu. It automatically adjusts all processes in RAM to saved settings when you load it.
It helped solve the problem of GPU apps dropping out of RAM regularly while the CPU had a full implement of vLHC running at normal priority. I whitelisted SETI v8 to above-normal and the WU's then were able to keep their CPU cycles secure and the GPU usage chart kept a green filled flow of 98-99% continuous.

(I get no kickbacks from that programmer. I just love the app)

@ Crystal Pellet:

Thank you for the technique - it works great, and I apologize for being so slow returning to thank you.

@ marmot:

Thanks for the reference. It looks to be quite powerful and I will need some time to check it out. Sorry for the slow reply.