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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: PC rebooting randomly |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 40
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
John,
----------------------------------------We are eager to know as it may impact what hardware/system requirements WCG specify and also add it as a knowledge base item. The BIOS may have restriction for allocating RAM to the Video. It's likely set at 64mb. All present BOINC jobs easily run in 512mb, thus try setting the BIOS to allocate 128mb. Can you post a screenshot of the maxed, distorted graphics, which should start hopping around like in the screensaver. A exact description of what you see if lost in the screenshot helps too. Screenshot capture and post instructions: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=8344 The BOINC FAQ (link below) may have something to tell too. Will look if i have NOTHING better to do ;>) Added: The VM has no impact on graphics. Some screensaver do frequent disk access, but not the WCG ones to my knowledge. You'd see it with higher disk activity.
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 2 times, last edit by Sekerob at May 7, 2007 1:33:40 PM] |
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johnlod
Advanced Cruncher Ireland Joined: May 1, 2007 Post Count: 50 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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There is plenty of hard disk left, so I set it to the system managed size as you suggested.
----------------------------------------For the sake of it, should I go back to BOINC screen saver, or will the change of virtual memory have no effect on what we think is a graphics problem anyway?  |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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There is plenty of hard disk left, so I set it to the system managed size as you suggested. For the sake of it, should I go back to BOINC screen saver, or will the change of virtual memory have no effect on what we think is a graphics problem anyway? I'm leaving the graphics prob to Sek since I barely understand what that's all about - don't really know much about the WCG clients but Sek is THE MAN for such things. If you're curious, I would try running boinc again and keeping an eye on virtual mem usage. Bring up task manager (cntl-alt-delete - the 3 finger salute) and click on performance tab. I think you're better off using the "What's running" software mentioned above or something similar, but this works too. Your PF (page file - i.e., virtual memory) usage should go up when using boinc or ud. But what's likely is that you loaded one too many other memory hungry programs and the agent was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I have 1 gig of RAM and my pf usage with ud agent is at 300 meg. Going by that, I would guess that your pf usage will probably be around 600 or 700 meg. This is less than the 800 you had set, but if you run several programs in addition to a browser, boinc and normal background processes, you can go over 800 real easy and real fast. Things like MS Office are real oinkers when it comes to memory usage. Pretty much all MS programs are oinkers, but don't get me started on that bone.   |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Forgot to mention - you should get and install FreeRam XP from http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/software.html#framxpro. This is a free program which will try to free up and compress memory when it drops below a threshold level. You can also set it to auto-free every couple hour or even minutes.
----------------------------------------I would however turnoff memory compression since that seems to slow things down with ud agent - don't know about boinc. I would also turn on periodic autofree. But make sure you change the option that prohibits memory freeing when cpuusage is high since in your case it will always be high. Freeram will also show you pf/virtual memory usage stats if you set that flag in the configuration section. |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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There is plenty of hard disk left, so I set it to the system managed size as you suggested. For the sake of it, should I go back to BOINC screen saver, or will the change of virtual memory have no effect on what we think is a graphics problem anyway? actually it would be nice to install a real AGP card on the system...so try to invest in your computer....that will get the job done (most certainly, 'cause of the shared memory issues) & you will have more speed for the graphics... also note that ATI X1800 and later do calculate with BOINC...so you might wanna try those, if you got that much to spare? the graphic card will also free the memory & you will have the 768MB of RAM awailable... |
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johnlod
Advanced Cruncher Ireland Joined: May 1, 2007 Post Count: 50 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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PF usage is stable around 500MB.
----------------------------------------I already had FreeRam running and while it occasionally went down to 30 or 40 MB free, it never went any lower than that. I'll be heading out soon, so I will reset the screen saver to BOINC and see of the virtual memory increase has solved the problem. Still think its a graphics problem though. |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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PF usage is stable around 500MB. I already had FreeRam running and while it occasionally went down to 30 or 40 MB free, it never went any lower than that. I'll be heading out soon, so I will reset the screen saver to BOINC and see of the virtual memory increase has solved the problem. Still think its a graphics problem though. Could be - diagnosis is a black art. Good luck - let us know. |
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johnlod
Advanced Cruncher Ireland Joined: May 1, 2007 Post Count: 50 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I'll look into the screen shous later, but for now I am sticking with the Windows screen saver.
----------------------------------------I was out of the house for a while and left the PC running with the BOINC screen saver activated, and guess what ...... the system stalled on reboot. I'd rather not allocate more ram to video and I prefer to have it available for the applications. Also given the age of the PC, I don't want to buy graphics cards for it. It chugs along quite nicely as it is, so I am happy to leave it. Perhaps a note should be kept in some FAQ that a machine with 64MB of video memory had reliability problems with the BOINC screen saver, and the suspicion is that it was a graphics problem of some description that was the cause of the problem. Does the BOINC screen saver invoke it's own device driver. The error message from Windows was that there was a problem with a device driver. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
No, it doesn't. The issue is probably caused by a bug in the graphics driver - BOINC is merely triggering the condition that causes the problem.
BOINC will crunch quite happily while another screensaver is showing. |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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so don't use the BOINC screensaver or get the used older graphc card for your system...any old graphic card with more than 64MB will be the same for you!
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