I joined yesterday and had the B icon. When I turned off the computer last night, and back on this morning, the icon no longer appears in the lower right corner where it had been. Does this mean our computer is no longer on the system, or that I did something wrong? I just assumed that I can turn off the computer without a problem as I intend to do so for conservation reasons. Please advise, thanks.

Dana

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There is an option when installing to run BOINC at startup.
If selected, this means that a shortcut (with icon), is placed in the windows startup folder, and this in turn means that BOINC, (and the B icon), will run automatically each time that you start the computer.
You can create this manually by making a shortcut from the boincmgr icon (in the BOINC folder), and dragging it to the startup folder.

There are a few other problems that you should be aware of:
1) Because Vista has a lot of \"you can\'t do that anymore\", (good old Microsoft), you should install BOINC and it\'s sub folders anywhere BUT in C:/program files.
C:/BOINC is a good place; it makes it easy to remember. Or in a separate partition, which makes defragging easier as well.

2) Vista is touted as shutting down even faster than XP. So ALWAYS Exit from BOINC before shutting down Windows. \"Cause one day you\'re going to get caught\". To paraphase an Australian ad for men\'s underwear.)

3) You\'ll lose less processing time if you wait until a checkpoint is reached by the model before shutting down.

More help and advice in the READMEs linked from my sig.

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Backups: Here

[quote]
There is an option when installing to run BOINC at startup.
If selected, this means that a shortcut (with icon), is placed in the windows startup folder, and this in turn means that BOINC, (and the B icon), will run automatically each time that you start the computer.
You can create this manually by making a shortcut from the boincmgr icon (in the BOINC folder), and dragging it to the startup folder.

There are a few other problems that you should be aware of:
1) Because Vista has a lot of \"you can\'t do that anymore\", (good old Microsoft), you should install BOINC and it\'s sub folders anywhere BUT in C:/program files.
C:/BOINC is a good place; it makes it easy to remember. Or in a separate partition, which makes defragging easier as well.

2) Vista is touted as shutting down even faster than XP. So ALWAYS Exit from BOINC before shutting down Windows. \"Cause one day you\'re going to get caught\". To paraphase an Australian ad for men\'s underwear.)

3) You\'ll lose less processing time if you wait until a checkpoint is reached by the model before shutting down.

More help and advice in the READMEs linked from my sig.

Ok, that is an explanation, but it is closing the barn door after horse has left! Why was not all this posted at the instructions for downloading for those who have Vista (which I have)? Those of us who wanted to help Climate Prediction are not all the computer savvy, you must realize.

Dana

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Ok, that is an explanation, but it is closing the barn door after horse has left! Why was not all this posted at the instructions for downloading for those who have Vista (which I have)? Those of us who wanted to help Climate Prediction are not all the computer savvy, you must realize.

Dana

Officially Boinc V5 doesn\'t support Vista, but it\'s usually possible to get it working using the workarounds above.

The Boinc developers have been writing Boinc version 6 which should work OK with Vista (but introduces complexity for everyone else - new user accounts on the PC are needed to make Vista happy).

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

Hi Dana

You will have downloaded and installed BOINC from the BOINC website, not from CPDN. Did your BOINC folder automatically get installed in C:\\Program files? I expect it did, which means that the server doesn\'t at the moment detect that you have Vista and change the default location to a more suitable place.

The BOINC programmers realise that this is a problem and when BOINC version 6 is released sometime soon in the new year, support for Vista will be official. I hope this means that on computers with Vista, BOINC v.6 will always install itself somewhere suitable.

On CPDN we have recently mentioned this problem of where the BOINC folder should be located on computers with Vista in a post about upgrading BOINC on Windows. It can be found in the project README about Running the Model. You\'ll find the READMEs through my signature and here\'s the specific README item:

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?p=71381#71381

I believe that one of the moderators, MikeMarsUK, is planning a README section just about running BOINC + model on Vista.

I agree with you that it\'s very annoying to discover later that you should really have been told about taking certain precautions at the time of the initial installation. Three problems there - most people wouldn\'t read them, or before getting started they wouldn\'t understand what the precautions mean, or the necessarily quite long list would deter a lot of people before they ever start.

I would recommend a look at the README about Crashes and Problems, particularly item #5 there by MikeMars. It\'s specifically written with climate models in mind and covers the important need-to-knows, including how to back up the BOINC folder to guard against a possible model crash.

If you need to move your BOINC folder from one location on your C drive to another to keep Vista happy, but aren\'t sure how to, let us know and one of us will post detailed instructions.

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...
I believe that one of the moderators, MikeMarsUK, is planning a README section just about running BOINC + model on Vista.
...

What I have so far is in the \'Crashes and other problems\' README, about half way down.

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=5896

Still very much a work in progress so any suggestions would be welcome. I don\'t have Vista myself so I\'m just picking up on what people say worked for them.

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

[quote]Hi Dana

You will have downloaded and installed BOINC from the BOINC website, not from CPDN. Did your BOINC folder automatically get installed in C:\\Program files? I expect it did, which means that the server doesn\'t at the moment detect that you have Vista and change the default location to a more suitable place.

The BOINC programmers realise that this is a problem and when BOINC version 6 is released sometime soon in the new year, support for Vista will be official. I hope this means that on computers with Vista, BOINC v.6 will always install itself somewhere suitable.

On CPDN we have recently mentioned this problem of where the BOINC folder should be located on computers with Vista in a post about upgrading BOINC on Windows. It can be found in the project README about Running the Model. You\'ll find the READMEs through my signature and here\'s the specific README item:

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?p=71381#71381

I believe that one of the moderators, MikeMarsUK, is planning a README section just about running BOINC + model on Vista.

I agree with you that it\'s very annoying to discover later that you should really have been told about taking certain precautions at the time of the initial installation. Three problems there - most people wouldn\'t read them, or before getting started they wouldn\'t understand what the precautions mean, or the necessarily quite long list would deter a lot of people before they ever start.

I would recommend a look at the README about Crashes and Problems, particularly item #5 there by MikeMars. It\'s specifically written with climate models in mind and covers the important need-to-knows, including how to back up the BOINC folder to guard against a possible model crash.

If you need to move your BOINC folder from one location on your C drive to another to keep Vista happy, but aren\'t sure how to, let us know and one of us will post detailed instructions.

[/
Yes, please, tell me how to move the BOINC folder from one location on the C drive to another to keep Vista happy. Also, how do I tell if the program is still working on my computer?

Dana

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Moving the location of BOINC and projects:

1) Exit from BOINC.
2) Create a new folder, in another partion, or on another drive.
(Else, create it as follows: C:/boinc)
3) Copy the ENTIRE BOINC folder to the new location.
4) Re-install BOINC, to fix both the registry, and the run_at_startup shortcut.

BOINC should start by itself in the new location, and continue running all climate models from where they left off.

Note: All of these problems are due to the way that security has been increased in Windows Vista, and is something that should be read up on before running ANY programs on the new OS.

On Windows XP, there is a message about not opening the area of: Program Files, because it contains important items needed to run the computer. However, it has been reasonably safe to put programs and data files there.
With Vista, they REALLY mean it!
Which is why version 6 of BOINC will split things up, creating folders in several loacations that are suitable for what will be stored in each.

Another item that\'s causing problems is UAC (User Access Control).
That may be in the Vista manual, or you may need to search the web for info.

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Backups: Here

If you need more detailed instructions about how to copy the BOINC folder across, use Les\'s instructions on how to make a backup here:

http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/forum_thread.php?id=4890

And to reinstall BOINC, to get it to install where you want it, look at point #7 onwards here:

http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?p=71381#71381

Regarding your two models, there are no trickles recorded on your CPDN web pages since 14 Dec. When you open BOINC manager and look at the Tasks tab, can you see the two models listed? Can you open their graphics and see them running?

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