I am running BOINC on 8 machines at home, churning on some 37 projects. They are all running Win 7 or Win 8.1, ranging from a Surface and a few laptops to 6-core CPUs with high-end NVIDIA cards. Most of them I don't look at with any frequency. Now and then I notice that some machine hasn't reported anything back for days, go check it out, and find either that it has rebooted (power loss, Windows Update, etc.) or that the BOINC Manager icon on the tray has simply disappeared even though the PC is just fine. Over the last few days I have noticed that every night on a few of the machines the BOINC Manager would simply be gone. Yes, they are all running the latest of everything.

My question is: When I look at a machine and find that BOINC has stopped some time ago, what are the things I can/need to do to either figure out the problem or report here for someone to figure it out? What, if any, log files to save/report? Any Event Log Diagnostic Flags I should turn on proactively on my machines to catch more information the next time this happens?

Even though I have been using SETI/BOINC for 15+ years, I am blissfully ignorant of all the different XML and LOG files it uses/generates, so you'll have to be thorough with your directions to me.

Thanks for anything!
Tuna

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Now and then I notice that some machine hasn't reported anything back for days, go check it out, and find either that it has rebooted (power loss, Windows Update, etc.) or that the BOINC Manager icon on the tray has simply disappeared even though the PC is just fine. Over the last few days I have noticed that every night on a few of the machines the BOINC Manager would simply be gone. Yes, they are all running the latest of everything.

Boinc Manager is the GUI, you don't need it running, you can happily shut it down without the Boinc client being shutdown.

The question is, is that client still running, ie Boinc.exe, Check task manager.

You can check the stdoutdae.txt and stdoutdae.old for what's happening, they're in your Boinc Data directory.

Claggy

Yeah, unfortunately BOINC.exe is long gone off the task list when I find a machine like this.

Next time it happens, I'll check those logs and report back here.

Thanks for the guidance!
Tuna

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I have recently been having problems with BOINC. Let me say at the outset - I am not knowledgeable about hardware or software at all, so please frame replies or suggestions as simply as possible. I have a single machine, a Dell desktop running Windows 7. I've been using BOINC for quite a few years, generally without problems - three projects currently being worked. BOINC has simply shut down within the past few days - no reason that I can see; it just isn't there. The screensaver reports "No Running Tasks", I find it difficult to believe that all three projects have shut down all at the same time. I have tried to go to the BOINC program itself, to see if there are any messages about possible stalls, but I can't find it (or, at least, the BOINC panel no longer appears) - if I click on the BOINC icon, all I get the screensaver. In the interest of full disclosure,
I had another problem with BOINC a month or so ago, in which a particular work unit, listed as being at 100%, wouldn't upload, and in so doing blocked everything else from operating; I solved that problem by suspending that unit - everything else quickly recovered and began running again. Related? I dunno. I can't assess what the state of the program is, I have no idea where the logs are located, I'm completely at sea here. Any suggestions?

I have recently been having problems with BOINC. Let me say at the outset - I am not knowledgeable about hardware or software at all, so please frame replies or suggestions as simply as possible.

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I can't assess what the state of the program is, I have no idea where the logs are located, I'm completely at sea here. Any suggestions?

Bruce Gordon, PLEASE READ THIS POST: When requesting help on these forums
and
Follow the instructions there for what information we need to help you out.

I had another problem with BOINC a month or so ago, in which a particular work unit, listed as being at 100%, wouldn't upload, and in so doing blocked everything else from operating; I solved that problem by suspending that unit - everything else quickly recovered and began running again. Related? I dunno. I can't assess what the state of the program is, I have no idea where the logs are located, I'm completely at sea here. Any suggestions?

Does Boinc still have that workunit suspended? If a there are any suspended Wu's for a project Boinc won't ask for work from that project, hence Boinc will run out of work for that project,
If you can't get the result to upload, then abort it, it's probably past deadline now anyway.

Claggy

Very well, here are the things the guidelines you directed me to need. My machine is a Dell, 64bit, with 2gig of RAM. My BOINC (user installed) is version 7.4.42.0 The projects I've been running are SETI@home, Asteroids@home, and Milkyway@home.

I seem to have lost access to BOINC, or, that BOINC itself seems to have stopped functioning. When the screensaver is up, it reports "No Running Tasks" - it rotates through each project as normal, but displays that message when the current work is supposed to be shown. I have gone into the tree, to the BOINC folder itself - there, when I click on the boincmgr application file itself, nothing happens, I get no error messages and the manager doesn't appear. I haven't gotten any other problem messages such as "out of memory", and all other programs on the system are running normally. As per Claggy's suggestion regarding the possibly related issue I had last month (thank you), I cannot abort the stuck unit I suspended (it was a Milkyway unit) because I can't get manager to respond - similarly, I am unable to provide logs for this problem, for the same reason.

2 gig that's all? sorry 2 gig is not enough.... can you upgrade to 4 or more?

That would help but many projects run fine on 2gb if that older machine he has is a 2 core machine. Some projects will run 4 WU on 2GB. For example, most of the Asteroid, Einstein and SETI WU peak virtual size is reported as 300mb to 400mb by Process Hacker.
Couple of my old Dells were running packets all winter with little swapping and one was running Win7 from a USB stick without a swap file.

Since he is running SETI and Asteroids he should be getting packets.

Asteroids and SETI both are out of work or having issues at this moment. That could be the problem.

Very well, here are the things the guidelines you directed me to need. My machine is a Dell, 64bit, with 2gig of RAM. My BOINC (user installed) is version 7.4.42.0 The projects I've been running are SETI@home, Asteroids@home, and Milkyway@home.

@Bruce Gordon, go to the projects tab on the advanced view then choose a project and choose 'update' on the left commands. Then go to the Advanced menu on the top and choose the Event Log (or hold ctl-chift-e) and see what the logs says after the project reports it requested an update.

For Asteroids it comes back to me and reports:

4/10/2015 8:57:48 PM | Asteroids@home | update requested by user
4/10/2015 8:57:49 PM | Asteroids@home | Sending scheduler request: Requested by user.
4/10/2015 8:57:49 PM | Asteroids@home | Requesting new tasks for CPU and NVIDIA GPU
4/10/2015 8:57:52 PM | Asteroids@home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
4/10/2015 8:57:52 PM | Asteroids@home | Project has no tasks available

If it's only about not having work then increase the buffer on your Tools->Computing Preferences->Network Usage->Max additional work buffer to 3 days or 5 days to get you through such outages.

...go to the projects tab on the advanced view then choose a project and choose 'update' on the left commands. Then go to the Advanced menu on the top and choose the Event Log (or hold ctl-chift-e) and see what the logs says after the project reports it requested an update.

A little advice here, marmot. The Advanced view is there for Advanced Users. Unless you specifically know the user to be advanced, either do all that from Simple View or tell the user afterwards how to come back to Simple view.

In Simple view the commands can be given through the Project Commands button on the front of the manager, whilst the Event Log is always available through CTRL+SHIFT+E, even there. At least, since some BOINC 7.1

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@Bruce Gordon, I apologize.
I had seen about 11 other users posting similar 'No running tasks' comments and it was because SETI and Asteroids not having work and I assumed it was the same problem for you when I saw:

When the screensaver is up, it reports "No Running Tasks" - it rotates through each project as normal, but displays that message when the current work is supposed to be shown.

But reading your comment again and noticing this:

when I click on the boincmgr application file itself, nothing happens, I get no error messages and the manager doesn't appear. I haven't gotten any other problem messages such as "out of memory", and all other programs on the system are running normally.

It seems like an installation problem because even if you need more RAM, the BOINC manager should still open and respond. If it were my machine I would scan the hard drive for errors and after getting a clean bill of health then I would reinstall BOINC.

I'm not sure what OS you are running but scanning the drive for errors is similar from WixXp onwards. Open up My Computer or This PC folder and right click on the drive C: then choose properties and select the tools tab and then error checking -> scan now. Use the 'automatically fix file system errors'. You'll likely have to allow the machine to reboot to finish the scan. Also, if you have more than one drive letter, scan those also.

@Jord

A little advice here, marmot. The Advanced view is there for Advanced Users. Unless you specifically know the user to be advanced, either do all that from Simple View or tell the user afterwards how to come back to Simple view.

In Simple view the commands can be given through the Project Commands button on the front of the manager, whilst the Event Log is always available through CTRL+SHIFT+E, even there. At least, since some BOINC 7.1

I'll keep that in mind for next time.