Just to let you know:

I downloaded BOINC yesterday, installed it and logged in to the project without any problems.

When BOINC tried to download project files and new work units, I received the message "http error" and no files were downloaded at all (that's not exactly true, because 3.76 KB of each file was downloaded but that must have been an error message - is there any way to check what the content of this partial download was?). I tried switching proxy but that didn't change anything ... when I left work I hoped the files would have been downloaded over night, but that didn't work either.

This morning I switched off my Symantec AV and restarted BOINC and downloads started and finished successfully! Once again it's that sh***y piece of AV software that caused troubles!! There wasn't even a note in the AV log files about blocked connections! So if you ever have trouble downloading files, stop Symantec and all will be fine ;)

Regards, Sascha

Hey, I've used Norton Internet Security (which includes AV) for 6 years and never experienced a download problem with Boinc. I use Norton's default installation without any tinkering. Therefore, it may be something about your particular installation, or maybe you blame Norton unjustly.

Norton Antivirus is known to sometimes crash some Boinc applications due to the type of file locks Norton uses. Basically if the science app tries to access a file at exactly the wrong moment while Norton AV is scanning it, the science app will not be able to open the file and will crash.

The recommendation is therefore to put Boinc's directory in both of Norton's exclusion lists (one for manual scans, and one for automatic scans).

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Sascha said

So if you ever have trouble downloading files, stop Symantec and all will be fine ;)

We should only stop our firewall if we will still have some other firewall protection running eg a router or Windows Defender. If we have no other firewall protection, we must not turn our only firewall off. Not even for a few minutes.

The solution is as Sekerob said to look at our firewall allow/block list and if necessary change our projects to 'Allow', or add them to the 'Allow' list.