My PC was crunching happily away at a project and had worked on the project for 30 or so hours, my PC is not of the fastest, but it gets some work done. Then today I open the BOINC manager to see how my crunching is getting on and how the whether was back then in 1931 or 1932, to my great despair I see that a new project is downloaded and I\'m back to 1920.

This is not the first time this has happened and it is taking it\'s toll on my patience as I would like my machine to do some futuristic calculations. The weather that has been we know about, it\'s the future weather that is of interest. I know that historic data is the bases for most correct calculations of the future climate.

Does anyone have a clue of why this is happening? I have not done anything to my PC that should make this happen.

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Of the models you\'ve had so far:

4 stopped with an \'exit code 0\'
1 stopped with an \'exit code -1\'
1 stopped with \'aborted by user\'


This would tend to indicate that something is killing the process. Task Manager\'s End Process will have this effect, or alternatively Windows Shutdown can have the same effect if it\'s being a bit too aggressive.

I\'d make two recommendations:

* Just before closing down Windows, right-click on the Boinc icon, and select \'exit\'. This will start off the Boinc shutdown a few seconds early, so that when the Windows shutdown occurs, it\'s already had time to shut down properly and windows doesn\'t kill it.

* Take backups at intervals (I do it weekly). This means that if it does crash, you can resume from the backup. See the README posts for specific details.

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I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

Thanks,

Yes, it might happen on shut downs. Several times I have received a message box asking if I want to kill BOINC. I haven\'t found out why, but obviously my XP SP2 has problems killing the service properly.

I\'ll give your suggestion a try and see if it helps.

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It\'s also possible to adjust the time Windows allows tasks to stop during the shutdown process, but it involves editing the system registry and hence isn\'t generally recommended. If you\'re interested I can try to see if I can find the instructions.

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I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

That would be great, as I think that it is being brutal to a few other programs too.

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A general warning for anyone reading this : Don\'t edit the registry unless you\'re confident with doing that. A mangled registry will prevent the PC from booting, and Windows will need to be restored.


The instructions for changing the registry entry for the windows shutdown time is here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305788


Alternatively I wrote a very small programme to do the same thing, but which does the registry editing for you. The .ZIP download is recommended since it includes the source code.
ExtendShutdown.EXE - 388k
ExtendShutdownTime.ZIP (recommended) - 207k

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I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

Did seem to help delaying the program shutdown time out. Guess I will just have to take backups every time I\'m going to shutdown my PC and exit BOINC manually.

Thank you anyway!

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Most of us just make sure we exit from boinc (right-click on the system-tray icon & select) and wait for the boinc icon to disappear before starting the computer shutdown process. It\'s also necessary to exit from boinc before scans, and suspending or (preferably) exiting before defragging is also mandatory.

Make sure you back up the entire boinc folder, not just the model files.

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Cpdn news

... It\'s also necessary to exit from boinc before scans, and suspending or (preferably) exiting before defragging is also mandatory. ...

This was very good to know!

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For extra useful info I\'d recommend the 4 READMEs in the News and Announcements section of the php forum here

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/index.php

Everybody can read the php forum, but if you want to post you need to register separately (please keep the same name so we recognise each other!).

I\'d particularly advise a look at the top tips in the Running the model README. And in the README about avoiding and fixing crashes, link #1 by Les who explains an easy backup method and #5 by Mike who gives lots of tips on avoiding the common causes of model crashes.

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Cpdn news

Most of us just make sure we exit from boinc (right-click on the system-tray icon & select) and wait for the boinc icon to disappear before starting the computer shutdown process. It\'s also necessary to exit from boinc before scans, and suspending or (preferably) exiting before defragging is also mandatory.

Make sure you back up the entire boinc folder, not just the model files.

And most importantly, make sure that BOINC and CPDN are not running before taking a backup!

So when is the snooze option an option? Is snooze a suspend for 1 hour option or does it work differently?

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