During the installation are you checking the box that says to allow all users on the computer to control BOINC?

One of the two problems is solved. I had upgraded the BOINC client with a CNET version. Once in a while, I run CNET Tech Tracker, which detects if you have outdated software, and it alerted me that BOINC was outdated. I downloaded their version out of convenience, but now I downloaded the install program directly from boinc.berkeley.edu.

It was the same version number, but a different file, with a different file date as well (actually, the Berkeley version was over a month older, from mid-August - the CNET version was from late September). I uninstalled the previous version and installed the one I had just downloaded. Just for a start, for the first time it installed a 64-bit client. Now the project (I only run WCG) and its tasks are no longer lost when I reboot.

However, I still have to start BOINC manually when I use the standard account, otherwise the tasks won't run. I'm sure I checked "Allow all users..." upon install all the times I did it: years of avoiding the infamous Ask toolbar, unwanted file type associations and other annoyances have made me very attentive to such installation details, and that's the sort of thing I'd know I would need in my standard account.

Ideally, one should forget that BOINC is there, but every time I log on, I have to start it. I wish this wouldn't happen...
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No, I didn't. I knew there was a reason, but I didn't remember why. Then I did - the hard way, as you will see.




It doesn't work that way here. With PAE enabled, BOINC simply doesn't recognize any projects and doesn't run anything. That was why I disabled PAE. I can see the service running, but no tasks even after quite a long time, and the BOINC Manager shows no associated project. The Manager also runs extremely slow even though the CPU load is low (and a Phenom II X6 1090T is not exactly a slow processor), can't connect to any machine or add a new project (nothing happens if I try), and no preferences are saved: I change them, save them, open the Preferences window again and everything is back to the default settings. Repairing the installation is no use then - I have to uninstall everything and reinstall without PAE.

All of my data - including but not only BOINC's - reside in a different disk partition from the system drive. Even My Documents and IE's folders such as History and Favorites are moved there. The reason is that if I have a catastrophic system loss, have to reformat the system partition and reinstall Windows, my data will be intact (unless it is a general hardware failure, but then I have external backups as well). But the BOINC installer (both the Berkeley and the WCG versions) correctly and automatically identified the folder informed during the previous install (it must be stored in some obscure Registry key), so I don't think that's the problem.

And as for the Manager eating up memory and cycles, at this moment I'm running the Manager, six WCG tasks (one for each processor core, I suppose), a browser window with two tabs, an e-mail client, Microsoft Word 2010, the TrueCrypt agent, antivirus, firewall and a lot of other processes, and I still have 5.4 GB memory free. Without the BOINC tasks running, CPU usage rarely hits 10% here. So, I don't think I have to be very much worried about that - especially considering that BOINC is supposed to use the CPU's idle time, but no one is expected to stop working and doing all one wants or needs to do as usual, and that will probably eat many more CPU cycles than the Manager.




Please correct me if I'm wrong, but once I obtained the client, installed it and associated it to one or more projects, I suppose it doesn't matter if Berkeley is down, because all communication will be with the project's servers, not theirs. But anyway, I did try the WCG client.

I thoroughly uninstalled Berkeley BOINC 6.10.34 with Revo Uninstaller Pro and installed the WCG client, a freshly downloaded version 6.10.58. First I tried it with PAE enabled, with the results I described above (which I had obtained in a previous installation, but didn't remember it, like: "oh yes, this was why I disabled it" - that and the fact that the Berkeley client installation screen explicitly says that PAE is now disabled by default and that it makes some project graphics and GPU computing not work with Windows Vista - I suppose that applies to Windows 7, too).

So I uninstalled the WCG client and reinstalled it with PAE off. This time not only no project or tasks were loaded, but when I tried to run the Manager I got a message that I was not authorized to do so! (Yes, I did check "Allow all users to manage..." when installing.) I repaired the install, changed the access privileges of both the program and the data folders so I could access them, and then the Manager loaded, but still no project or tasks.

I gave up, uninstalled the WCG client and returned to the Berkeley version, which had worked before, even if with caveats. First I tried the Berkeley version with PAE enabled, something I hadn't done yet. Same results: no project found, no way to add one, no tasks run, no settings saved. Then I uninstalled it and reinstalled it with PAE disabled. At first it didn't recognize my project, but then it opened the wizard so I could specify and connect to WCG.

Still, it didn't recognize my project folder and started downloading a deluge of brand new tasks - which, added to my current running ones, would never meet the deadline. So I aborted them all (it's not very clear what happens in such a case, but I suppose that means telling WCG "I'm not running this, please find someone else to do it") and had the idea of restoring my backup of BOINC's data folders (which I diligently had made before starting the experiments). This time it worked, but now I'm back to square two: I still have to start the Manager, and do it manually, for BOINC's tasks to run.




I believe that, and I don't think that the fact that the Berkeley client is working for me while WCG's isn't has anything to do with them being 64- or 32-bit. But the fact still remains that Berkeley's client works here, WCG's doesn't.
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