I use BOINC 5.2.13 on a WinXPhome PC with a dialin internet connection; I let it work on climate and SETI. My 1st ClimatePrediction WU (to be precise, I aborted myself an earlier one may-be because 2 WU were loaded, probably due to my trials with the stop function but I don\'t remember well) has reached 4+ % and then crashed - with a 1073807364 code which seems to be a bad threat as I read in another post in this forum - but I made a backup on 15.2.06, it must have made approx. 2.5 % by then. (I had planned my 2nd backup for today, but before the crash came !) Does it make sense to restore from the backup or is the process likely to crash again at the same place ? If yes, how do I do the restore ? (In the BOINC site I found the advice for saving: in my case it does XCOPY \"c:\\Programme\\BOINC\\*.*\" \"c:\\LaterSaves\\cBOINC\" /C /M /E /Y; not being familiar with XCOPY, I ask what will be the restore command ? And how can I obtain that the server side (where my WU is \'over\' with an error) will recognize further work after restoring ? What else must be done in case it\'s possible to continue ? (For the moment, the work page of my BOINC manager mentions no more any Climate WU. The one I had was a sulphur ...)

OK, Backup and Restore:

It\'s a bit messy when several projects are involved.
The best advice I can give is to read this part of the BOINC Wiki.

The first message received by the server is the one that users are stuck with in their record. In this case it\'s \'error\'. But that won\'t stop you from continuing and successfully uploading a completed model. (Continual crashes until you give up will. :( )

What will happen on restarting from a backup is unknown. But, as the 1073807364 error seems to be related to graphics cards, then the model may well crash again.
Have you tried to update the driver software for the card?

No more wu: This depends on whether or not you choose to restore.
If not, then go to the Projects tab, click on the Climate project, then click Update. This should get you a new model. Unless SETI is currently running, in which case BOINC may wait until it\'s cpdn\'s turn.
And if you still have problems with your graphics card, the new model may also fail.

If you need more help, just ask.

OK, Backup and Restore:
It\'s a bit messy when several projects are involved.
The best advice I can give is to read this part of the BOINC Wiki.

Yes, this was certainly my source for the Save procedure. I had forgotten where I had it from. And it is indeed rather complicated, the Restore while my BOINC also does SETI; I hope, my English is sufficient to understand precisely what I have to do - otherwise, I might come back on this.

(...)
What will happen on restarting from a backup is unknown. But, as the 1073807364 error seems to be related to graphics cards, then the model may well crash again. Have you tried to update the driver software for the card?

No but as the default graphics display for the Climate Prediction is anyhow not very interesting, I might just no more let them display - at least until the end of phase 1 ... Is it necessary then to update the driver ? (I bought my PC on Dec.04 and did not yet have problems with source in its graphics card - at least as it seems to me.) Can the crash occur when I look at SETI\'s graphics ?

(...)

I also do CPDN and SETI. I do a weekly backup, but my procedure is quite simple.

1) on Thursday I open the BOINC Manager, tab Projects, select S@H and click \'No new work\'.
2a) on Friday, when all S@H WUs are complete, I open the BOINC Manager, tab Work, select the CPDN WU, Commands -> select Suspend. Then exit the BOINC Manager.
2b) now I copy the entire BOINC folder to my BOINC backup folder (using Windows Explorer drag & drop).
2c) open the BOINC Manager once again, allow new work for S@H, then set Commands back to Run always.

These are the essentials in backing up the CPDN WU. What I also do between 2a and 2b is defragment my HD, which has become quite fragmented during a week of work and crunching.

To p.willener,
Thank you for your tip about how to backup ClimatePred. when also using BOINC with SETI. It is a bit more complicated than what it says in the BOINC Wiki, but will make future restores a lot simpler; I think it\'s worthwile, because - as it seems from what others say - crashes of ClimateP. occur rather often.

Remains my secondary question (about the relation to the driver of my graphics card) for which I hope an answer, leaving for the moment my already restored Climate WU suspended. (I made the restore as described in the wiki, it seems OK, only the re-attaching of the SETI project I haven\'t done yet - so for the moment, my PC is not doing any BOINC work ...)

I don\'t run other projects, so I don\'t know what will happen when you display SETI graphics.

To p.willener,
Thank you for your tip about how to backup ClimatePred. when also using BOINC with SETI. It is a bit more complicated than what it says in the BOINC Wiki, but will make future restores a lot simpler; I think it\'s worthwile, because - as it seems from what others say - crashes of ClimateP. occur rather often.

Remains my secondary question (about the relation to the driver of my graphics card) for which I hope an answer, leaving for the moment my already restored Climate WU suspended. (I made the restore as described in the wiki, it seems OK, only the re-attaching of the SETI project I haven\'t done yet - so for the moment, my PC is not doing any BOINC work ...)

Crashes vary according to the machine, for example, mine has never crashed with a -107..., but has fallen over several times with a \'zero result exit\'. Fortunately for me, the \'zero result exit\' is harmless and just resumes by itself from where it left off.

I would recommend the following :

* If you receive a microsoft \'Send/DontSend\' dialogue, \'exit\' the boinc processes before responding to the dialogue. This hopefully will mean that the model will restart at the last checkpoint instead of giving up and starting a new one.

* If you use Norton or Sophos antivirus, exclude the boinc project directory from the automated scan.

* Update graphics drivers and openGL drivers even if you don\'t use the graphics display.

* Before playing games etc, set \'no more work\' and \'suspend\' the model - that way they won\'t tread on each other\'s toes.

* Run a stability test on your machine, I recommend Prime95 from www.mersenne.org (the \'torture test\' option). Run it for about 24 hours. If this fails, then there may be problems with overheating / overclocking etc, cleaning out dust from the motherboard and fans often helps if this is the case.

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(...)
I would recommend the following :
(...)
* If you use Norton or Sophos antivirus, exclude the boinc project directory from the automated scan.

I use now ZoneAlarm AV - which does the famous firewall *and* anti-virus, BTW quite efficiently doing live updates !! Do you think I should try to exclude the Boinc dir. with this AV ?

* Update graphics drivers and openGL drivers even if (...)

What are openGL and openGL drivers ?

* Before playing games etc, set \'no more work\' and \'suspend\' (...)

I normally don\'t play PC-games (even the ones contained in Windows, which are probably not very \'dangerous\'. But my question: what includes your \'etc\' ? (please just make it a bit more precise - e.g. by examples)

* Run a stability test on your machine, I recommend Prime95 (...)

Interesting in itself ! I\'ll try the \'torture test\'. May-be that participating to (large Mersenne) prime number seeking is something for me when I\'ll have finished with my ClimatePred. WU (probably not before summer 2007 ...) Is it possible to run BOINC (for SETI, say) and GIMPS on the same PC - without manually stopping one of them before starting the other one ? ;-)

I use now ZoneAlarm AV - which does the famous firewall *and* anti-virus, BTW quite efficiently doing live updates !! Do you think I should try to exclude the Boinc dir. with this AV ?

The advice from Carl, the chief programmer, is that it is only necessary to exclude the projects directory in BOINC, which contains no executables. Whilst you should be OK, there is a risk of future problems with any AV software, so I would be inclined to exclude, but others may disagree.

What are openGL and openGL drivers ?

There\'s more advice here on graphics.[quote]

I normally don\'t play PC-games (even the ones contained in Windows, which are probably not very \'dangerous\'. But my question: what includes your \'etc\' ? (please just make it a bit more precise - e.g. by examples)[quote]
I doubt that you will have trouble playing something like Hearts, but a lot of role playing games, a game like Civilization 4, flight and railway simulators, and so on, make very intensive use of graphics in particular.

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I use now ZoneAlarm AV - which does the famous firewall *and* anti-virus, BTW quite efficiently doing live updates !! Do you think I should try to exclude the Boinc dir. with this AV ?

The advice from Carl, the chief programmer, is that it is only necessary to exclude the projects directory in BOINC, which contains no executables. Whilst you should be OK, there is a risk of future problems with any AV software, so I would be inclined to exclude this folder, but others may disagree.

What are openGL and openGL drivers ?

There\'s more advice here on graphics.

I normally don\'t play PC-games (even the ones contained in Windows, which are probably not very \'dangerous\'. But my question: what includes your \'etc\' ? (please just make it a bit more precise - e.g. by examples)

I doubt that you will have trouble playing something like Hearts, but a lot of role playing games, a game like Civilization 4, flight and railway simulators, and so on, make very intensive use of graphics in particular.

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...
I normally don\'t play PC-games (even the ones contained in Windows, which are probably not very \'dangerous\'. But my question: what includes your \'etc\' ? (please just make it a bit more precise - e.g. by examples)

What I meant is anything which uses either large amounts of CPU or memory. Games are the most common example of this, but also things like VMware, 3D graphics programmes, image manipulation, ...

OpenGL is a 3D graphics driver, most commonly used in games and screensavers. It\'s a distinct API, but is frequently part of the graphics driver.

I use ZoneAlarm SecuritySuite myself, while I haven\'t lost a model from it\'s antivirus scan, I\'ve added the directories to the exclusion list just in case (would really hurt to lose 1000 hours of processing time!)

The Prime95 torture test doesn\'t help the Mersenne search, since it\'s testing against known results. As it happens, I\'m running it myself at the moment - my Sulphur workunit has just finished, and before I go onto the BBC model I want to make sure everything is 100%.

You can run multiple projects within Boinc (the standard client, not the BBC client), although the Mersenne project isn\'t one of them. Basically it just swaps every hour or so depending on the settings you\'ve created, so no manual intervention is required.

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I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
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