The CPDN help page contains an entry that tells me that I should run BOINC as a service, but the instructions provided do not work. The program boinc_cli.exe does not exist in the directory where BOINC was installed. Is it still recommended to run BOINC as a service? If so, how is that accomplished?

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Hi, Ray, welcome aboard.

Not sure where you saw the recommendation to run as a service. However, if numbers of queries are any indication, most folks don\'t run CPDN as service.

I\'ve been doing this for two and a half years, on more than one machine, and have not run any as service. That is not to demean any who\'ve done so -- merely to suggest that, as far as I know, it isn\'t the norm.

Personally, I like the control over the process offered by keeping boinc in my own files (not Program Files) and not starting auto-magically at boot-time. It\'s easier in Linux, but I\'ve always (since CPDN went boinc) run CPDN in its own folder. (That means unique folders when running Alphas and Betas [though, obviously, no two could be active on Win. simultaneously].)

For one thing, running as service means no graphics, unless you jump through some hoops.

Your choice.

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

I just took a look at one of my Boinc service installations. There is no sign of a boinc_cli.exe but there is a Boinc.exe and a Boincmgr.exe ... both of which showed up in the task manager when I logged on.

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Using boinc_cli.exe to set up the service was depreciated a while back, possibly prior to 4.00, certainly by 4.20. Now you can set up the service as part of the install procedure.

Hoops for enabling service graphics

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

Thanks for the information. I will continue to let BOINC run as is. To answer another question, the information came from the Climateprediction.net FAQ. I accessed it from the Projects tab in BOINC, highlighted the climateprediction.net project and then clicked on the Help button on the right hand side of the screen. That link brought up the FAQ page on the climateprediction.net web site. About halfway through the FAQ are 2 things that caught my interest. Setting preferences to leave climateprediction.net in memory when time slicing between projects. I had not been doing that and was wondering why I was making VERY little progress. It looked like it kept starting over. The other item was the Running BOINC as a service. This was recommended in the Help to prevent corrupting one or more of the files when BOINC preempted the project for another. Again thanks for the help. If there is still reason to run BOINC as a service, I would like to learn more about that.

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Running Boinc as a service is handy as it starts up when the machine is booted and runs silently whether you log in to your machine or not.

When you install Boinc as a service you have to provide the ID and password of the account on your local machine that you want Boinc to be associated with. On boot up Boinc will run as a background task using that accounts credentials. If you subsequently log on to the account normally the Boinc Manager icon is where it usually is and can be used to manage the Boinc service.

I use it for a number of machines that I run without keybaords and monitors - just boot the machine and forget about it. I also use it on a couple of \"family\" machines running Windows XP home. These machines have 3 or 4 ID\'s each. I have Boinc installed as a service on my own account on each machine and it runs silently regardless of which account(s) are actually being used. Boinc manager is only available on the account that I use.

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Thanks to those that responded to my question. I am now running BOINC as a service. I wanted the ability to have it running regardless of which user was logged on at the time. I have also altered the service setup per the instructions from the BOINC WIKI to allow the graphics to work. The previous client installation would not run the graphics as a screen saver, don\'t know why. But the new installation running as a service with the service able to interact with the desktop lets the screensaver work.

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