someone posted in the
Server failures in last few days thread on the A@H forums claimed that detaching and reattaching his hosts eliminated his download errors. but in a subsequent response, someone tried the same thing and it didn't do anything for him. i won't be able to test either a project reset or a detach-reattach for another ~48 hours or so b/c that's how large my cache is, and i don't want to trash any of the "ready to start" A@H tasks that are currently in the queue.
in the mean time, my A@H host has also reached the point where a majority of my A@H tasks are now download errors. i also noticed my scheduler request back-off times are now in the neighborhood of 24 hours b/c of it. the only reason the A@H project hasn't stalled on this host is b/c i've had more than 24 hours worth of tasks in my queue. nevertheless, i realize that the more download errors i return, the longer my scheduler request back-off times become, and sooner or later i'll run out of new work before the BOINC client is scheduled to contact the A@H server and request more work, thus stalling the project on my host...
...
but i've come up with a workaround (for Windows hosts anyways). open up the simplest plain text editor you have, for instance notepad, and enter the following text:
boinccmd --project
http://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/ update
save and close it. then rename the file extension from txt to bat. then place the file in your BOINC installation directory (not your BOINC data directory). DO NOT create this batch file using a more powerful text editor like MS Word, as they sometimes tend to add invisible characters to the file before saving. now go to start menu -> all programs -> accessories -> system tools -> task scheduler. create a scheduled task that executes the batch file you just created, and set it such that it executes the batch file every X minutes or hours. mine is set to execute every 2 hours...so despite the fact that BOINC may not want to contact the A@H server again for another ~24 hours on its own accord (due to an insanely long scheduler request back-off time), the batch file will force BOINC to do so as if you just manually updated the project. voila! babysitting without having to babysit! sure, your host will continue to return download errors (until they get the problem fixed server-side), but at least the project won't stall on your host because of it.
*EDIT* - btw, setting up a scheduled task in Win7 is alot easier than it was in WinXP, but it can still be tricky...so if you can't get your scheduled task to execute exactly how and when it should, let me know and i'll do my best to help.