I avoid Win10 on my dedicated PCs where I do the crunching for a variety of reasons, but the main one is that you lose control over driver upgrades."

Actually, you need to read the end user agreement for Win10. You lose control over everything. Windows has the right to go through your computer and delete what it considers to be counterfeit programs and content. It goes through your data and e-mails to "improve services."

Windows 10 is a massive invasion of privacy, period. Everyone who has actually read the EULA has rejected it in my circle.

Windows 10 is a massive invasion of privacy, period. Everyone who has actually read the EULA has rejected it in my circle.

Yes, but I don't need to read the EULA to figure that out; it just legalizes the mess.

Speaking of which, Ubuntu 16.04 came along just in the nick of time. I won't say that Linux is a good OS for desktop use, but for dedicated crunchers it works.

Thinking this time I'll take your and Jim's advice <grin>. I really don't want to go to Windows 10, and have installed "Never10" on all my Windows 7 machines to avoid the constant nagging and then threatened automatic installs of Windows 10.

I think I may shop around for an inexpensive Windows 7 Professional upgrade disk.

In the meantime, everything is running OK with BOINC and the new memory so far...next week I'll allow 100% CPU processing to enable all 8 CPUs again and see what happens.

meantime, everything is running OK with BOINC and the new memory so far...next week I'll allow 100% CPU processing to enable all 8 CPUs again and see what happens.

Jack it up to 100 percent now. You're good to go.

Hope so...right now I'm out of town, so will crank it up to 100% on Tuesday when I'm back home.
Art

TEST 10 STARTED

I've re-enabled 100% CPU processing (all 8 CPU's) on my Intel I7 as of 6PM CT on June 20th, now that I've replaced the memory with matched SIMMS.

Art Masson

TEST 10 RESULTS

I had 3 failures today including jobs that had been running successfully for 4 or 5 days. I've set my BO|NC processing CPU limit to 75% again (6 CPUs).
My lesson learned is that I simply can not successfully process CPDN WU's when the CPU limit is 100%. The memory stick size difference wasn't the problem.

At this point I pretty much give up trying to understand the problem further...I'll just keep the processing limit at 75%

This will be my last posting on this subject!!!

OK, but I get occasional failures too on machines that I know are quite capable of processing them correctly. Usually the failures are after only a few minutes, but once in a while they go for days. So it is not necessarily your PC, but of course be conservative in case of doubt.

This has been typical failure modes for only my Intel I7 machine. When operating at 100% CPU load, I believe these failures occur when BOINC is attempting to switch processing back to CPDN projects from other projects -- but there are other seemingly random failures. I've been working for a few months to try to understand root cause, but at this point I've decided to stop trying to understand fully and just run this machine at 75% of CPU load, since that seems to avoid most of the problems.

At 100% CPU load, the problem is so severe, that for almost a year I had NO successful CPDN WU's processed successfully on this machine -- and NO errors in any other projects. (only CPDN WU's were consistently failing)

I can only assume this problem is strictly a problem with this one machine based on my experience with my 3 other PC's processing CPDN work units, and confirmation from other BOINC users that they are not experiencing these kinds of problems.

Art Masson

I wonder if the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility would be of any use to you. I think you can control various aspects of the processor with it.

Thanks, Alan. But I'm not sure I have the expertise to use this tool without some advice from a knowledgeable source. I would not want to make my situation worse and at this point I suspect I already have some issues with my CPU...If you know of a knowledgeable individual who could provide advice, please let me know.

I found an unused copy of Windows 7 Ultimate that I had and used the Windows Version Upgrade feature to upgrade my operating system to Windows 7 Ultimate -- which now enables me to use all 32GB of memory.

I'm still keeping BOINC set at using no more than 75% of my CPU's (6 of the 8 available). I will continue processing this way indefinitely.

End of thread

Art Masson
St. Charles, IL

After running with no failed CPDN work units for two months with a maximum of 6 CPUs available to BOINC, I tried to increase the number of BOINC CPU's from 6 to 7 (of my 8 I7 CPUs). Within a few hours, two CPDN WU's failed -- including one that had been running successfully for over 4 days.

I've reset the # of BOINC CPU's back to 6 and have been running with no errors now for some time.

Lesson learned: I have no idea why I get CPDN WU failures with anything over six CPU's available, but I will not not try to push this further. None of my other projects experience failures with 8 CPU's running, but there is something about the CPDN WU's that fail with all my CPU's active.

Happy to be back at six CPU's again! And...this is REALLY my last post on this thread!!!


Art Masson
St. Charles, IL