Thank you, Lawrence. I think your reply may have highlighted some very simple confusion:

My team member has a mac and is running the BOINC agent. He says "Pretty much whatever I do now to the profile page I get 'suspended' if I run the screensaver" – however your reply tells me there is no screensaver with the BOINC agent. So I'm wondering if the problem is simply this: he must have set his device profile to run only when the computer is idle but he must also have set some sort of ordinary screensaver to run when the computer is idle (and while that screensaver is running his computer is never going to be idle for the BOINC agent to start operating).

So if this makes sense it means that someone who has set the BOINC agent to run when the computer is idle must not activate an ordinary screensaver or the screensaver will take priority. As a non-BOINC person this seems very logical to me but could you confirm before I get back to my team member?

BOINC does have a screensaver and it does work but not quite as expected. All grid organizations (SETI, WCG, Rosetta, etc.) have the option of providing a custom graphic for BOINC to display when the screensaver cuts in. WCG ha s not provided a custom graphic but the BOINC screensaver will cut in and the screen simply goes blank rather than display a graphic. At least that's the way it works on my Windoze computer

I think when Lawrence said there is no screensaver he meant to say there is no custom WCG graphic for the screensaver.

I'm still wondering if Miksang_nh has set an independent screensaver to run. Could you tell me if this would prevent the BOINC agent from running as he has changed the Device Settings so that BOINC only runs when the computer is idle.

Hi, it's me, miksang_nh

Yeah, I knew that the screensaver on the Mac isn't exactly "running" boinc -- I just wanted to see what it said now that I'm having problems running it. And it says "connecting to boinc.... boinc is currently suspended.... boinc is currently suspended..."

Which is pretty much what I knew.

I changed my settings in the profile called "default" in an effort to have a bit less heat in my office and a bit more speed on the Mac during a work day. I've tried all sorts of settings -- for idle periods (currently this is zero), whether the machine is busy (currently it's set so the machine can be working), and project weight (it's set back at 100). I think I've set everything back pretty much the way it was when I started, but boinc won't run anything now no matter what. I've quit boinc manager and restarted, aborted projects. A few days ago aborting a project meant a new one would start. Now, just now, I've aborted even the last one, and no new ones are starting.

I'm going away for a week, starting later today, so I won't be running boinc on my laptop while traveling. But I do want to get this working...