S@H HELP needed or I permanently loose some of my herd......

[Assimilator1]

OK ,it's not much in the total daily output of the team ,but still.......

For about 3 months now a friend has been running SETI for me on various machines including a PII 350 ,recently he's been running it through the day.But has now stopped SETI altogether on it because he found that at the end of the day his machine would be running at a crawl ,that only happens when SETI has been running through the day.
If I loose one I could loose the other 2 as well
I have already been told by a friend that he also gets that problem , rebooting it will solve that ,but I was hoping there was a better answer than that.
Oh yeah ,some specs
SETI GUI v2.0x
Win 98
PII 350 256Mb RAM

 

[Hellburner]

Is this machine used a lot? The only thing I can think of is that because windows handles memory so sloppily and S@H uses so much of it vcache scrambles the ram/pagefile systems and brings the systems to their knees. Here is a program that might help: http://www.outertech.com/english/products/cacheman/cacheman.html

There are many other general Windows tweaking stuff out there also, bloated Registries can bog down machines along with too many TSR programs. Too many people I know have a dozen or more programs sitting in their systrays, this just causes trouble...

 

[Assimilator1]

He's already installed Cacheman by my suggestion (thanks anyway) ,I'm gonna double check with him that it has actaully been set though.

>>>Is this machine used a lot? <<<

During the day ,whilst he's at work if on it just (used to)runs SETI ,but when in ,he does use it alot.

BTW what's TSR programs?

I'll see if I can get him to post here ,it would be easier ,but don't hold your breathe .

 

[Hellburner]

How about defragmenting the swapfile, I remember once having all sorts of slowdowns because it was badly fragmented.

TSR are Terminate and Stay Resident programs. The stuff that shows up in the systray, it makes loading them up faster but they also use up resources, if I'm going to use Winamp, Realplayer, .... then they can load when I want to use them. I don't need them cluttering up my system when not in use.

 

[Sukhoi]

Why not just have him have the GUI only run as a screensaver? Doing that should stop his performance problems, and let you keep the herd. You might loose a few hours of cracking time, but big deal if it means you can keep the herd vs. loosing it.

 

[ColinP]

Also, you could try upgrading to the latest client (if your not already running it)... Dunno if there were any memory leak problems with the old ones, but it might be worth a go...

Col

 

[Assimilator1]

HB

I'll aks him if he's defragged lately ,though I would think he has.

Agreed on that 2nd point ,it really bugs me when programs load in like that :|

Sukhoi

I dont think that'll make any difference ,the problem is ,apparently,SETI running through the day seems somehow to hog resources when he goes to ues it even if SETI is shut off.
Thanks anyway

ColinP

He's using GUI v2.02 or 3 ,do you think v2.04 will help?

 

[BadThad]

Right on HB, I see lots of PC's with 6 or more items in the systray...YUCK. I have only 3 in mine, antivirus, play control (for quick volume adjustments, and Zonealarm....what more does anyone need?

 

[Assimilator1]

errm ,try ,MBM,rain cooler ,tclock (thats mine not his BTW)

 

[RolandG]

Would your friend be open to trying the command line version? I don't think it would hurt his system resources as much as the GUI version. Even on my old computer a 166 pentium with 128 mb ram I've never noticed the command line version slowing the system down much. I leave it up 24/7 on the 166 and I run to instances of the command line version 24/7 on my new dual proc machine without it hogging resources. Granted I'm running Windows 2000 on all my machines &amp; NT &amp; 2000 keep S@H running at low priority. I've never run Seti@Home under 9X so the commandline version might not run as smoothly for extended periods under 9X.

 

[Train]

probably a heat problem, stick another fan on his systems to keep them from getting warm and sluggy by the end of the day.

Also could be a memory leak,

batthad: i hate it when i work on someones computer and they have like 20 things running in the systray, YUCK!

 

[Assimilator1]

Thanks guys ,I'll follow some of those ideas up .