Major computer slowdown
22 Jun 2005 18:04:20 UTC
Topic 189394
(moderation:
Did anyone faced and solved the problem with computer slowdown while running EAH?
My machines runs under WinXP Home/Pro. I installed boinc as a service run as an admin. While I'm running EAH application system becomes sluggish. Switching between applications takes seconds (eg. 30sec). Starting new ones also. Looks like EAH is blocking system for a while. But not always. Sometimes the machine works fine for hours or even days, and then back again. First guess, one workunit does problems, another is not.
Of course task manager shows EAH application at low prio.
I'm sure it's not becouse of occasional cpu benchmark.
If I stop EAH/boinc problem goes away like a charm.
And one word more. I did run Folding@Home before, and I never encountered this problem with F@H.
Major computer slowdown
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I can just talk about Linux. I have one dual-CPU machine and when I start boinc, it runs fine with low priority. The cruncher application itself runs with nice 19 (this is the lowest priority on Unix). Everything works fine until one unit is done and another one is started. From this point on the cruncher runs with nice 5, which is almost the standard priority.
This effect does not happen on my other machines, but the others have only one CPU.
So If you have a dual processor machine, then we may have the same experiance.
But maybe you examine the priority with some other tool. Actually on Linux there are 3 threads, the main thread always runs with lowest priority, but the cruncher thread is the bad one. I expect that Taskmgr shows you the priority of the main thread and not the one of the real crunching thread.
I'm running on 3GHz Dual
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I'm running on 3GHz Dual Pentium 4 with hyper-threading. Win XP Home (SP2).
BOINC set to "Run always". Installed at default priority (low) and default everything else. I've done absolutely nothing special about my configuration.
I run Outlook, Explorer, Quicken, Celestia, watch DVDs, play America's Army (very graphics intensive) and run other programs... many times running 3 or more simultaneously in various combinations... and I've never had significant system slowdown like that.
Same thing on my 2.4GHz Laptop.
Looking at my dual P4's task manager... by themselves, the two Eintein 4.79 processes are taking up ~50% each of my total CPU time, and they seem to adjust down accordingly whenever I start a new process or when one comes out of idle.
Only funny thing I've noticed is that BOINC often forces my network connection to time-out with my router.... so over time, I get multiple "ghost" IP addresses on the router that won't release unless I reboot it, and my computers keep "one-up"ing on the IP address assignments.
????
"No, I'm not a scientist... but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express."
RE: My machines runs under
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That says a lot. What version of BOINC are you running? I have an XP Pro computer that from time to time I have to reboot. The reboot clears up a lot of "strange" things. XP64 bit seems to run a lot better.
In my case reboot does not
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In my case reboot does not help. The version of boinc is 4.24 and 4.25.
And I'm really wonder that nobody did experience this behavior. I encountered this on few my machines, not just one.
Oops... Forgot that. BOINC
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Oops... Forgot that.
BOINC V4.45
"No, I'm not a scientist... but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express."
Try BOINC 4.45. V4.25 tended
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Try BOINC 4.45. V4.25 tended to overdo some of the Windows API calls.
OR.....
Could be you have services running that are interfering with each other. Problem is that Anti-Virus, file indexing and file backup utilities intercept filesystem activity. Its this that can cause a "slowdown", everyone is trying to use the same file, and waiting for the other guy to release it.
And usually that "other guy" is the Windows lock manager.
Things you can do:
A/V - exclude BOINC and the files/folders in the BOINC hierarchy. Viruses shouldn't be a problem because the downloaded files are signed, including the science application executables, and the signature is checked before starting each WU. Do include BOINC in your weekly(?) "full scan", and its probably a good idea to suspend BOINC during that scan.
Windows Indexing Service - turn it off. Or change it to only index downloaded files and documents you create. Definitely don't include BOINC as it rewrites its files regularly.
"Live" File backup utilities - exclude BOINC and the files/folders in the BOINC hierarchy. These are undelete utilities or things like "GoBack" that track file changes as they're made, saving all the intermediate copies. This is useless for BOINC as all the files are quite dynamic in nature and interdependent.
RE: Did anyone faced and
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Have this same problem under Win2KPro. it is to the point that I am considering re-installing 2KPro to a new directory.
A recent thread about this was on the Seti Crunchers Forum recently. Seems to be really spotty on who is affected and who is not
'
RE: Seems to be really
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Exactly. Not all machines behave like this.
And I disabled antivirus on boinc directory - did't help.
over heating the cpu? this
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over heating the cpu?
this was talk about in seti when running einistein
RE: over heating the
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In my case, I doubt it. I have two case fans, a CPU fan and a fan mounted over my Memory sticks.
CPU temp hovers around 50c as reported by Intel ActiveMonitor
SystemZone 1 around 31c
SystemZone 2 around 38-39c (The memory area)
The processor red zone starts at 70c and the other two at 50c so I should be well within tolerances