Dragging my machine down

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Rob Jacob

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Message 70935 - Posted: 6 Aug 2011, 21:44:25 UTC

I have been running this for years. In the past, I just let it run in the background and have not noticed it. But recently it seems like something has changed. I find my machine being sluggish to load IE or bring up new webpages, etc. But if I set BOINC to snooze, it starts running normally again. I have it set to run when I am not using it. But it seems like maybe it is not recognizing when I am using it, or slow to pause. It's getting irritating.
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mikey
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Message 70947 - Posted: 7 Aug 2011, 12:09:57 UTC - in response to Message 70935.  

I have been running this for years. In the past, I just let it run in the background and have not noticed it. But recently it seems like something has changed. I find my machine being sluggish to load IE or bring up new webpages, etc. But if I set BOINC to snooze, it starts running normally again. I have it set to run when I am not using it. But it seems like maybe it is not recognizing when I am using it, or slow to pause. It's getting irritating.


Let me start with a short story and end up with the answer....my dad bought a new computer several years ago, it did all the usual things, it was a Windows based machine and worked just fine with no problems. One day he calls me and says 'what are those numbers counting on the screen, it never did that before but it is now'. Well I went over there and it was the pc checking the ram as it booted up, it took me 2 hours to convince him that it was happening to every pc and he just had not noticed it before! He still sees it of course but I am still not sure he believes me!

In short I think the answer is you are now waiting to do something and you are getting more aware of the waiting you are having to do as you wait for things to load now than you used to be. When we first get a pc we all want to go on the internet, we have to find the icon, click on it, wait for it to load and then figure out where to go. As we get more familiar with our pc's we KNOW where the icon is, we KNOW where we want to go, in short we are getting impatient and thinking ahead to WHAT we want to do not HOW we do it. I think that is what you are seeing, not Boinc taking longer but you being faster.

Now it COULD also be a virus, trojan, etc so go here http://malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free and download the FREE version of MalwareBytes and run it, I always run the 'perform quick scan' when I run it. The only difference between the free and paid versions is the paid one updates and runs itself, while with the free one you must do each manually.
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Profile rochester new york
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Message 70951 - Posted: 7 Aug 2011, 14:45:48 UTC - in response to Message 70947.  

I have been running this for years. In the past, I just let it run in the background and have not noticed it. But recently it seems like something has changed. I find my machine being sluggish to load IE or bring up new webpages, etc. But if I set BOINC to snooze, it starts running normally again. I have it set to run when I am not using it. But it seems like maybe it is not recognizing when I am using it, or slow to pause. It's getting irritating.


Let me start with a short story and end up with the answer....my dad bought a new computer several years ago, it did all the usual things, it was a Windows based machine and worked just fine with no problems. One day he calls me and says 'what are those numbers counting on the screen, it never did that before but it is now'. Well I went over there and it was the pc checking the ram as it booted up, it took me 2 hours to convince him that it was happening to every pc and he just had not noticed it before! He still sees it of course but I am still not sure he believes me!

In short I think the answer is you are now waiting to do something and you are getting more aware of the waiting you are having to do as you wait for things to load now than you used to be. When we first get a pc we all want to go on the internet, we have to find the icon, click on it, wait for it to load and then figure out where to go. As we get more familiar with our pc's we KNOW where the icon is, we KNOW where we want to go, in short we are getting impatient and thinking ahead to WHAT we want to do not HOW we do it. I think that is what you are seeing, not Boinc taking longer but you being faster.

Now it COULD also be a virus, trojan, etc so go here http://malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free and download the FREE version of MalwareBytes and run it, I always run the 'perform quick scan' when I run it. The only difference between the free and paid versions is the paid one updates and runs itself, while with the free one you must do each manually.


http://securitytango.com/
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Message 70952 - Posted: 7 Aug 2011, 15:39:55 UTC

Rob, as you say, you've been running for a long time and have a good sense of what to expect of your machine. I suspect that some of the new work units are consuming more memory then we're all accustomed to. This can make your machine generally slow, because everything needs memory to run. Even if BOINC properly suspends computations as you've requested, the machine still has to go bring things into memory. There are BOINC preferences for how much memory to use. This can result in less active CPUs, but a more responsive machine.

The simplest way to confirm if BOINC snooze is working as desired is to look at the Windows task manager (or equivalent if you are not on Windows) and sort the list by CPU%. If tasks are still running and actively using CPU (not just present in the list), then you will want to review your BOINC preferences on that specific machine and see if perhaps they have been set to override those configured via the project webpage. Beyond that, a newer version of BOINC may help resolve the issue.
Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense
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Message 70990 - Posted: 9 Aug 2011, 16:00:39 UTC

I'd have to agree with the OP, Rosetta is getting to be more and more of a load on my system. The following screen cap from Sysinternals Process Explorer shows clearly what the problem is:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/828/boinc.png/

Take note of the Virtual size, CPU time, Page fault total and Page fault delta.

I'm seeing about 10,000 page faults *PER* *SECOND* from Rosetta, i.e. it's thrashng. If I ran all six cores of this system, that'd be something in the region of 60,000 page faults per second.

Note how the virtual size is north of 500 megs, that's a lot of the cause of the problem: Rosetta is getting to be too much of a memory hog, to the point that only really high end systems can run it without noticing the load.

TL;DR you guys need to reduce the memory footprint back to what it was a year or two ago, i.e. no bigger than 300 to 400 megs. Minirosetta isn't so mini any more.
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Message boards : Number crunching : Dragging my machine down



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