LHC@home

I have 3 Win 10 hosts - all have the latest Win updates, BOINC 7.8.2, and VirtualBox-5.1.28. One has always run VM/Theory tasks flawlessly. The other 2 always fail with "heartbeat errors" after about 25 minutes runtime and getting to 1.850% complete. Project resets and installing/repairing newer versions of VirtualBox do not help.

One of the failing hosts is only about a week old (and came loaded with Win 10). The other failing host is fairly old and came loaded with Win 7. It ran VM tasks without any problems on Win 7. The problem started immediately after updating to Win 10 and since then all the new releases of BOINC and VB were faithfully installed (and the project reset) - all to no avail.

The host that runs VM tasks came loaded with Win 8. And, it has never had any problems running VM tasks on either Win 8 or 10.

I have looked at set up issues, preferences, etc. for differences between the hosts and, although there are some, none seem pertinent.

Any ideas?

What comes up in my mind is that probably on your failing Win10 machines, Hyper-V is enabled.

Hyper-V and VirtualBox on one machine is conflicting and cannot run together without problems.

Try disabling Hyper-V.

After looking at some of your failing tasks the most likely cause is that as Crystal Pellet said for some reason hardware virtualisation is not enabled, either because Hyper V is enabled or for some other reason. Please try enabling it.

There are a couple reasons that can happen since the VB tasks have to connect with the Cern server in 20 minutes or less or they will do that same thing and will fail and then run another 5 minutes before *Computer Error*

BUT in your case as Pellet said and you will see in your failed tasks stderr *Processor supports HW virtualization: no*

Which means you have to get into the computers Bios and set it to run the Virtualization.

https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/result.php?resultid=157937306

Other than that Windows 10 is very dependable doing these VB tasks as long is you take care of that and have the proper amount of Memory depending on which version of tasks you want to run (Theory uses less so your 8GB ram will run better with those than the other tasks with VB)

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Volunteer Mad Scientist For Life

Thanks to all who replied. Obviously, I am not up-to-speed on virtualization and have some reading to do. So far, I have only scanned one article. But I saw something that is probably pertinent in my case: Windows 10 Home vs Windows 10 Pro. Again, thanks to everyone for pointing me in the right direction.

After looking at some of your failing tasks the most likely cause is that as Crystal Pellet said for some reason hardware virtualisation is not enabled ...

based on my own experience, I would say though that if hardware virtualisation is not enabled, a VB Task would fail and stop right after a few seconds.

In the present case, it was running for some 25 minutes, but could obviously not establish an internet connection to the CERN Server.

Other than that Windows 10 is very dependable doing these VB tasks as long is you take care of that and have the proper amount of Memory depending on which version of tasks you want to run (Theory uses less so your 8GB ram will run better with those than the other tasks with VB)

On one of my PCs with 8 GB RAM, I can run two CMS tasks simultaneously without any problems, and still some RAM is free for other minor tasks.
What concerns ATLAS, only one task can run on a 8 GB machine.

The problem (with the new host) appears to have been the bios hardware virtualization setting (now enabled). A Theory task is now running and is well passed the previous 25 minute failure point. (And another task is in "the waiting to start" queue.)

My earlier stated concern regarding Win 10 Pro vs. Win 10 Home was not relevant. Win 10 Home won't run Hyper V but is apparently OK to run Vbox as long as the virtualization bios setting is enabled.

Fixing the bios on old Win 10 host is proving to be more difficult. It is too old to access the bios via the UEFI route and when I try the F2 boot option it wants a password (and I have no idea what it is). Don't have time to research it right now.

Again, thanks to everyone who replied - you were a big help.

On one of my PCs with 8 GB RAM, I can run two CMS tasks simultaneously without any problems, and still some RAM is free for other minor tasks.
What concerns ATLAS, only one task can run on a 8 GB machine.

Yes you can run as you said those 2 CMS tasks with 8GB ram

The reason I mentioned Theory tasks is because I have several 8-core computers that can each run 8 Theory taks at the same time since they have 16 and 24GB ram.

BUT they can not run 8 CMS and definitely not 8 Atlas tasks at the same time (and I have tried it before)

Try to press F10 to select BIOS Setup

(I did alpha and beta testing for Microsoft Windows 10 and have 6 different computers that have been running with Win 10 for a couple years now)

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Volunteer Mad Scientist For Life