My immediate guess is that the disk is full - or that partition.

The stderr of the 2 of the failed tasks on the individual result webpages had these odd errors:

1 task
forrtl: The volume for a file has been externally altered so that the opened file is no longer valid.

2 task
Sfsorrde: The vd CPDN Mona file hSusbeen requeast from BOI so that the opened file is no longer valid.

These errors didn't seem to be right at the failure point, but I don't know.

Has anything changed on that PC recently? Upgrade or different antivirus/antimalware programs?

Hi
The only thong different was a series of blue screens earlier in the day "reference by pointer". After a bit of research, I used avg's tune up test version which amongst other things, fixed a large number of registry errors. It is possible that the live optimiser changed the priority of running tasks. My Bonic tasks and the programs are on a 16 gig sd card <drive H> where there was 5 gig of free space at the time of the crash. Not having used the live optimiser before, it is possible that it may have turned off parts of windows which the tasks needed. On the plus side, since running the tune up, The reference by pointer error is gone. <for now>. I am considering the option of reinstalling windows 10 after I empty the pending task list. a pain to put it mildly, but if it sorts the errors, it will be worth it.
Thank you for your input and ideas
Vicki

Hi Vicki

Just some notes rather than a cure.

The screen shot that you posted says Visual Fortran, because that's the language in which the main program is written.
The file that it was trying to write is one of the data files that had data that had just been calculated.
WHY it couldn't be written has many answers, e.g. the device could have been busy doing something else at that moment. But if it's an SD card, it SHOULD have been fast enough, so hard to say.

When models crash, they leave behind some data, usually in a folder that has the same name as the model. The advice for this is a manual delete of all folders with model names that DON'T match those of running models. I don't know how this affects an SD card; perhaps they get left here as well?

And as for Windows 10, Prepare for problems. :)

The worst one is that Windows 10 is a bit of a bossy boots - it wants to be in total control of the computer. The main one that affects us appears to be automatic updates, that it does when ever it feels like it.
So make sure that you turn all of this off.
I think that there's an option something like Notify me, but don't actually do the update.
In Windows XP, there was one something like Download then notify me.

Then, before you allow updates, Suspend BOINC (in the menu), then Exit BOINC (in the menu).
This way nothing is running while Windows is fiddling with things.

Hi Les
Thanks for your kind thoughts
Yes we have talked about visual Fortran before.
The sd card has sucessfully completed many tasks since my joining date with this pc.
Alas i am well past the wind back date to roll back to factory os <acer win 7 home edition, no doubt an oem version designed to work best with the hardware.>
After tasks fail on this pc, Their completion state goes to 100% and Bonic tries to send the last zip file trickle. After which, Bonic appears to do the housework and remove the last bits of leftover task. Having looked though the sd card, I couldn't find any traces of tasks that aren't currently running.
Still I will run the tasklist dry and reset all the projects I take part in. It might also be a good time to defrag the sd card while it is relatively empty. Assuming no more task failures between now and then, emptying the tasklist will take 14.5 days from time of posting, at the programs best guess to time to completion for the longest task.

Here is one other idea, If I merge win 10 on cpdn with the win 7 ultimate <same computer, different os, seperate partition> could I then reboot into win 7 and complete the tasks in what is a more stable os? or would they not match up unless the trickles are sent from win 10?

Look forward to your reply

Vicki

I gave up on Windows way back, so I don't know about what you propose. (MS said to upgrade from XP to a newer OS, and get new hardware if necessary. So I did - I upgraded from a Kentsfield Q6600 to a Sandy Bridge, and from Windows XP PRO to Linux.)

But ...
Changing your configuration, from 7 to 10, will give you a new computer ID, and this will be used to identify where the model and it's data files are sent, and from where to expect data to be returned.

It might also be a good time to defrag the sd card while it is relatively empty.

Vicki, The reason to defrag a drive is that files that are spread across lots of different parts of a mechanical drive mean the head has to keep moving about causing it to slow down. With an SD card or solid state drive all defragging will do is increase the number of write cycles the drive has been subjected to and reduce it's life.

Just a quick comment about Windows 10 that may help.
I have been using Win10 for over a year (starting with the preview). The only problem I have had in running BOINC is that after a Restart of the computer, I need to start BOINC Manager using "Run as Administrator" from the drop down menu when I right-click on the icon for BOINC.

I have Win10 Pro version and although it automatically downloads the Windows updates, it does not automatically install them. Instead it offers to do that later (usually "Tomorrow at 3am"), or I can change the time to something I prefer, or I can click a Restart button to do it immediately.

Hi Ed, Les and other readers.
Sadly and for what ever reason known only to microsoft, the Home edition of win 10 has 2 options only, "automatic" and "notify when a reboot is required". There is no "off" option or "notify before download", or "download and notify when ready to install" as some previous versions had.

Having considered the best and worst options over the last few hours, I could reset the default os to Win 7, and simply turn the network back on on bonic which is still installed from before I migrated to win 10 on a different partition. All of which still requires me to wait 14 days and so many hrs to clear the existing task list.

What if I copied the boinc data directory from the sd card to win 7 ProgramData\Bonic? Would that then convince cpdn's servers that it is still the same computer processing the same work units?

For all of the differences between windows 7 and 10, There are only a few apps that I will miss, but there are lots of other programs designed for 7 that do similar things.

One thing i won't miss about win 10 on this desktop is the screen randomly going blank for a few seconds, and the mouse moving while the screen is blank. it's quite annoying, esp when reading or writing articles or posts here for that matter.


Enjoy your night / day

Vicki

Hi all,
after making a backup of the data directory, I managed to migrate back to windows 7 sp 1. so far so good. Drive H continues to be my data drive. One or 2 tasks were lost in migration before I was able to exclude the data directory from further scans by avasts deep scan. still at least now I can type without the screen blanking out on me!

Enjoy your day and I hope anyone else considering going back from windows 10 to an earlier edition finds this useful.

Kind thoughts

Vicki

Sadly and for what ever reason known only to microsoft, the Home edition of win 10 has 2 options only, "automatic" and "notify when a reboot is required". There is no "off" option or "notify before download", or "download and notify when ready to install" as some previous versions had.

I think it gets worse from there. As I understand it, you can't turn off the driver updates on any edition (except perhaps by turning off the BITS service itself). That is it for me. I put Win10 on my laptop, and no great harm done. But for all my crunching machines, and also my main desktop PC, it is Win7 for me. In fact, I just installed Ubuntu 16.04 on my best Haswell machine. It was long in the planning, and I just had to have the motivation. Win 10 did it.

And now there's this:

Microsoft accused of Windows 10 upgrade 'nasty trick'

Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop-up box encouraging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10.

Clicking the red cross on the right hand corner of the pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box.

And this has caused confusion as typically clicking a red cross closes a pop-up notification

And now there's this:

Microsoft accused of Windows 10 upgrade 'nasty trick'

Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop-up box encouraging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10.

Clicking the red cross on the right hand corner of the pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box.

And this has caused confusion as typically clicking a red cross closes a pop-up notification

There is revert to previous windows button available for the first 30 days after installing windows 10, it is found in settings somewhere. I can't recall exactly where as the button goes at midnight on day 30.

Sadly and for what ever reason known only to microsoft, the Home edition of win 10 has 2 options only, "automatic" and "notify when a reboot is required". There is no "off" option or "notify before download", or "download and notify when ready to install" as some previous versions had.

I think it gets worse from there. As I understand it, you can't turn off the driver updates on any edition (except perhaps by turning off the BITS service itself). That is it for me. I put Win10 on my laptop, and no great harm done. But for all my crunching machines, and also my main desktop PC, it is Win7 for me. In fact, I just installed Ubuntu 16.04 on my best Haswell machine. It was long in the planning, and I just had to have the motivation. Win 10 did it.

Security updates for Windows 7 end January 2020, so 3.5+ years. By that time, both my laptop and desktop will be replaced, so I'm not in any hurry.

On my laptop, it was urging me to upgrade, but the laptop is 6+ years old. So I googled problems with Win10 & my specific laptop and it turns out the ATI video driver does not work, and power management is far from optimal. The notification from Microsoft said everything was fine. They are so desperate to get everyone over to Win10 that they pull this trickery. Why should I be surprised... Even on systems that might be 100% Win10 compatible, the "upgrade" sometimes causes all kinds of problems, whereas a clean install might work just fine. Not good.

M$ plans a major "upgrade" this Summer as The Anniversary Update. It [might] include changes which [might] make some folks more comfortable with Microsoft's latest OS exercise in corporate arrogance:

http://www.howtogeek.com/248177/whats-new-in-windows-10s-anniversary-update/

A personal note: I regret using the "free" upgrade on my eligible boxes (except the 8.1 box, for which even Win10 is an improvement) but the thought of reverting to Win7 with a clean install on other boxes -- including downloads for years of updates and bug-fixes -- gives me pause. (As does returning to Linux.)

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

Hi AstroWIx and other readers
I can tell you from my personal experience of running cpdn on win 10 and win 7 sp1; that the laptop running win 7 sp1 experienced no errors or outages even with similar tasks running concurrently on both machines. The hardware in both is relatively similar, except my laptop is more AMD than Intel, unlike the desktop from which I am typing this (AMD ATI Graphics card and some other Components; Intel I3 quad core CPU). By running both os's and tasks in parallel, as any good system designer would do, to check for potential issues I have learned a lot. My conclusion from the research is that while windows 10 has some good points, Research work units tend to run better and without issue on windows 7 sp1; which with clean install is less than 2 hrs from booting from the install media to being operational enough to begin running tasks in Bonic projects. Remember if you have incomplete tasks in Bonic prior to doing your clean install; Copy the entire ProgramData/Bonic data directory to removable media before formatting the drive. After reinstalling Bonic, Copy the Bonic Data directory Back onto your hard drive. Another option for those who like both operating systems, is to simply put win 7 sp1 onto a separate partition, and adjust Bionic's Install parameters with the advanced mode to point to the same data directory in both operating systems. Be sure to exclude your Bonic Data directory from any anti virus program so as to avoid tasks crashing as they start.

I Hope this is also helpful to you or anyone else.

Kind Regards

Vicki

There's been another change in this saga.

This is where I found out about this, and there's links to other sites which may be of interest / use:
Win 10 upgrade warning

To stop Windows 10 from nagging and updating my machine, I've used NEVER10
at
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

[geophi wrote:]Can't you choose to have Windows notify you when an update requires a reboot? Then schedule it in the future some time, but reboot before that time when you have a chance to shutdown boinc cleanly? I haven't any system on Windows 10 yet, but likely will in the near future.

[Iain Inglis wrote:]That's pretty much what I do. However, the recent WAH2 casualty on restart makes me rather resent the required intervention: all WAH2 tasks will now have to be completed before manually rebooting. I'll do nothing next patch Tuesday and look at the event log to see what if anything happens automatically and remind myself of the time periods offered. Perhaps I've interpreted the language as being stricter than it is ...

Well, the Windows Update process has run this month and I didn't intervene - so it did indeed reboot the computer. This is what I thought would happen and is a major defect in Windows 10 from my point of view: whatever problems it causes for BOINC are not my principal concern here, it's that my data-logging software and endless regression testing of simulations would break (if I hadn't vetoed Windows 10 in the office - but that can't last forever).

I am now officially baffled by the statements of those Windows 10 users who say that their computers don't reboot when Windows Update requires it.

I am now officially baffled by the statements of those Windows 10 users who say that their computers don't reboot when Windows Update requires it.[/quote]

Could those people be running Win10 Pro and not know the difference between Home and Pro? Pro does not automatically reboot.

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