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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: BOINC service bogging down system |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 64
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Ingleside
Veteran Cruncher Norway Joined: Nov 19, 2005 Post Count: 974 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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So - I enable everything in mscconfig, which turns on WCG service and the startup program, and restart. Within about 2 minutes the CPU core speed is pegged at 400 MHz, about 7% of its speed! That's what is going on, why it's so slow even though CPU and memory have plenty to spare. This is awful, what do you think? One possibility is the power-settings, as others has already commented on. Another possibility is overheating. If the power-settings seems to be OK, try monitoring the cpu-temperature. Many computers does include an utility to monitor cpu-temperatures, or you can try other tools like example CoreTemp downloadable from http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/  "I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might." |
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awalt
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jul 9, 2008 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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So, then, I killed the BOINC service, and the BOINC processes, and waited about 5 hours. The CPU core clock never went back up beyond about 400 MHz. I went into mscconfig and turned off the 1 service and the 2 startup processes, rebooted, and all is back to 3000 MHz.
Something is seriously wrong with either BOINC, or its interaction with Win 7 64 bit. I have turned it off again, as you can see a system running at 7% - 10% of its CPU speed is not very usable. |
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awalt
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jul 9, 2008 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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So - I enable everything in mscconfig, which turns on WCG service and the startup program, and restart. Within about 2 minutes the CPU core speed is pegged at 400 MHz, about 7% of its speed! That's what is going on, why it's so slow even though CPU and memory have plenty to spare. This is awful, what do you think? One possibility is the power-settings, as others has already commented on. Another possibility is overheating. If the power-settings seems to be OK, try monitoring the cpu-temperature. Many computers does include an utility to monitor cpu-temperatures, or you can try other tools like example CoreTemp downloadable from http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ I have checked the power settings. The CPU is set not to do anything, I am on the high performance setting. It can't be overheating, it's stepped down in about 5 minutes, and even after 5 hours (see last post) the fan is hardly running if at all, and the system is still stepped down to 400 MHz (13% of full speed). Something either BOINC or BOINC and Windows 7 interaction, puts the CPU into a state that it never recovers from without a restart. |
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awalt
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jul 9, 2008 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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If the device profile is "Power Saving: Set my profile so that my computer's power settings can take effect," this will allow the system to go into low power mode. I guess this or some customization might be forcing the low power mode to happen, when Boinc is running, after a set time period (default is 20min). Alternatively, and as I said a few days ago, an update might have reset the power settings. PS. You can just press start and type in Power to open up the Power Configuration window. Power Setting is High Performance. Checked it several times, thanks... |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello awalt,
When I got a new computer last year, I spent a couple of weeks on the power settings. Somehow, the OS or BIOS had a bug in it. If I allowed anything to time out, the entire computer would slow down and any attempt to speed it back up would cause it to freeze until I rebooted. I finally set everything to always run at max speed. Now I manually turn off the monitor rather than automatically turning it off after an hour. Lawrence |
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z2000
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 27, 2011 Post Count: 116 Status: Offline |
I installed Linux (Ub.11) on half the drive, and it seems like I won't be using windows much more on that pc. If this laptop were mine I would do that too, but I'm just not sure for others to do that over a forum.
----------------------------------------...although this time with version 11, I found the partinioer so extremely easy to use. Honestly I don't like XP or the price of it either, but kept it on half the drive for now. My other Pc which is still entirely XP is starting to seem to be running boinc too slow. Does windows 7 have a registry cleaner and disk reorganizer? and another question is if restoring the laptop to an earlier date like a month ago is a good idea? If so, does it restore to the version prior to the recent updates? Or how about going to 'add or remove programs' and uninstall the recent upgrades? On xp you can find them from there by the 'date installed'. What I don't know is if this works for the upgrades or not.  |
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awalt
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jul 9, 2008 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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OK, making some progress albeit not a solution yet.
I did some hunting around in the Event logs, and under Applications and Services Logs / Microsoft/ Windows / Kernel-Power/Operational, I found an event log, Warning, for most of my CPU cores for about 3:55 PM yesterday (when I turned on BOINC) that says "Processor xx was throttled by an entity other than the kernel power manager." I suspect this is the Dell power management. There is a setting under the Advanced settings, Processor Power Management / System Cooling policy, where the choices are active or passive. It's set to Active. Now I move on to investigate the SpeedStep technology turned on in the BIOS... Note in that same area "Minimum processor state" when plugged in is set to 100%. |
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sk..
Master Cruncher http://s17.rimg.info/ccb5d62bd3e856cc0d1df9b0ee2f7f6a.gif Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Post Count: 2324 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Bespoke implementations of power management can be fickle.
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awalt
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jul 9, 2008 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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When I turn SpeedStep off, CPU runs a constant 1200 MHz - 40% of max (note CPU cores [4]) are described as 2 GHz). It just doesn't seem to want to run BOINC without stepping the CPU down to 300 MHz, 10% of max. Again to note, I have run BOINC on this laptop for a year without problems. Oh well, maybe next laptop will run it. Thanks for your help!
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sk..
Master Cruncher http://s17.rimg.info/ccb5d62bd3e856cc0d1df9b0ee2f7f6a.gif Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Post Count: 2324 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Click Start, type in Power, then click on Power Options.
Check that you are not using Power saver rather than High Performance. Select to use High Performance, Then click Change Plan Setttings, Then click Change Advanced Power Settings, The processor settings should be, 100%, Active, 100% Click OK and Save These Changes, if you made any. If your settings are as above then it must just be the Dell settings causing the downclocking. So you will have to work out the Dell software yourself. I would start by checking the Bios, to see if you can keep it in a high performance mode from there. |
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