Posts by CWangersky

1) Questions and Answers : Windows : Dialog box: 0xC0000005 (Message 20624) Posted 22 Feb 2006 by CWangersky Post: I have mentioned elsewhere that I have never yet been able to complete a sulphur WU. The specific problem that I have right now is a dialog box that pops up, saying: sulphur_4.22_windows_intelx86.exe - Application error The exception unknown software exception (0xc0000005) occurred in the application at location 0x69405822. Click on OK to terminate the program. Because this does not trigger DrWatson, I have to assume that the exception is being handled, albeit not properly. I would like to put this application on a set of 18 computers that I am installing at a school, but this dialog box popping up will confuse the poor students, even if I set CPDN to work only at night. Is there any plan to handle exceptions like this without the dialog box appearing? For what it is worth: Windows XP Pro 64 with SP1 on 64-bit AMD 3200+; 512MB RAM; BOINC 5.2.13 and sulphur cycle 4.22; and the machine is also running BOINC SETI@Home 4.18.
2) Questions and Answers : Windows : Periodic sluggishness and message boxes (Message 20565) Posted 21 Feb 2006 by CWangersky Post: The models actually checkpoint every 3 model days, if that helps. ... The BBC coupled model project, right now, checkpoints every 6 model days, so the hesitation is less frequent... Not sure if that will satisfy your concerns about that problem. Unfortunately, no. Granted, a freeze every 7.5 minutes is better than a freeze every 2.5 minutes, and presumably a freeze every 15 minutes would be easier still, but I\'m afraid that will not answer sufficiently for my purposes. My experience is that the checkpointing is enough to irritate me very much, and I can\'t expect the students at this school to be able to handle it any better than I can. Unless the checkpointing can be lowered in priority so as to not result in an apparent freeze, I will have to do something less invasive.
3) Questions and Answers : Windows : Repeated 0xC0000005 errors: disk space wasted? (Message 20564) Posted 21 Feb 2006 by CWangersky Post: Hi, I wouldn\'t worry about deleting directories of models that did not complete successfully. Thank you for that information; I will deal with that. That will help a lot, I think. As for the errors, that error has been associated with hardware faults, and some antivirus software faults. Are you running antivirus on these PCs, and if so, what type? There are no AV packages running on these machines; the office uses ServerProtect that does not have a 64-bit version, and I have been looking without success for something that will run native 64-bit. Another post in this thread mentioned a couple of hardware test packages; I\'ll try them and see what happens.
4) Questions and Answers : Windows : Periodic sluggishness and message boxes (Message 20546) Posted 20 Feb 2006 by CWangersky Post: I am about to start running BOINC projects on a computer lab that I am installing in a school that I work with. I have encountered two problems with BOINC CPDN that need to be addressed before I can put CPDN on this group of machines. One of them, as I mentioned in my title, is sluggishness. Ordinarily, CPDN is quite happy co-existing with everything else and getting out of the way when it needs to. The one exception is when it is checkpointing. When it reaches the end of a \"day\", it checkpoints, and while it is doing that, mouse and keyboard input and screen updates slow right down. The machines I am going to be installing this on are AMD64 3200+ / Windows XP (32-bit) Pro, which should complete a timestep in about 3 seconds; with 48 timesteps in a \"day\", this means a checkpoint about every two and a half minutes. As a checkpoint takes about three seconds, this means that my students will, if I allow CPDN to run, have a three-second freeze in their work every two and a half minutes. The other issue is the GPF errors. In another message I mentioned that I am getting GPF errors; what I did not mention is that these are coming up on the screen as dialog boxes \"sulphur_cycle.EXE\" / \"This program has caused an error 0xc0000005\". While these boxes are easy enough to close, they really should not be coming up at all -- the other BOINC projects am running, rosetta and SETI, do manage to trap these errors without putting up dialog boxes -- and I am concerned that they will cause my clients to think there is a problem with the computers. I don\'t know if the errors will occur in the new machines -- where I\'m seeing them is on an AMD64/3000+, Windows XP 64-bit, machine with sulphur_cycle 4.22 -- but it would be a problem for the students if it ever did show up, and could be a problem for me as well. Are there any plans to deal with these two issues?
5) Questions and Answers : Windows : Repeated 0xC0000005 errors: disk space wasted? (Message 20545) Posted 20 Feb 2006 by CWangersky Post: I am currently running BOINC CPDN on two machines. Both are AMD64 / Windows XP 64 machines, so BOINC is running under WOW. Both of these machines have an extremely hard time completing work units, erroring out in phase 1 (usually) with the error 0xc0000005 (General Protection Fault). One machine has been particularly bad: 320810, maroon-xp, has failed 7 times, and only now has managed to get into phase 2 of a work unit. The particular problem that I am facing is this: This machine now has a total of 7 partial WU occupying almost 2GB of disk space. Some of these WU may be useful. What should I do with them? In particular: I believe WU 1093016 (sulphur_iyi9_000884529) completed phase 1 at least, as it ran for 870,000 sec. Similarly WU 1549933 (sulphur_hek9_000812025) ran for almost 350,000 seconds and may have useful data. Because of this I don\'t waht to just erase them... but there is so much disk space being used that I cannot do any other BOINC projects on this machine.