F@H: What happens if fails to complete a work unit?

[alnitak]

Hi everyone, I recently joined the Folding@Home project with 2 PCs. The first is a 2.2GHz P4, but the second one is very slow - a PII-300 - which is also running Kazaa (which is something of a CPU hog). It takes about an hour to crunch one frame on its current protein, and given the number of frames (400) and number of days (14), it isn't going to complete in time.

Is there anything I can do about this? Or do I just have to wait for the 14 days to finish and hope that it picks a less time consuming protein next time?


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alnitak

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: alnitak
Hi everyone, I recently joined the Folding@Home project with 2 PCs. The first is a 2.2GHz P4, but the second one is very slow - a PII-300 - which is also running Kazaa (which is something of a CPU hog). It takes about an hour to crunch one frame on its current protein, and given the number of frames (400) and number of days (14), it isn't going to complete in time.

Is there anything I can do about this? Or do I just have to wait for the 14 days to finish and hope that it picks a less time consuming protein next time?
--
alnitak

Delete the "work" folder from under the folder where you installed the client (with the client shut down). That should cause it to get a new WU.

Kazaa is known for having a distributed computing client in itself, which is "stealing" time from F@H. Try uninstalling Kazaa, then running AdAware. Now, go to Kazaa Lite and install it. It's the Kazaa without adware and unrequested distributed-ware.

 

[alnitak]

Thanks jliechty, I have already cottoned on to Kazaa Lite, but I did have Kazaa proper installed at first and I suppose it's quite possible that there is still some junk installed somewhere.... I'll give Ad-aware a shot on Feb 5 - downloads are currently disallowed until the new version 6 comes out.

 

[ProviaFan]

Just a tip, enable your private messages so I can help you more. Do this by setting the option in your Forum Profile.

 

[alnitak]

Private messages now on!

I think I have the problem cracked, actually. I downloaded a prior version of ad-aware from www.winsite.com, and it didn't find any spyware; so I did a little googling and it turns out that if you are viewing the "traffic" screen in KazaaLite the CPU usage goes up drastically (at least on an old CPU like mine). So I have now minimized KazaaLite to the task tray and the CPU usage pattern has changed. It now tootles along at about 5% utilitisation for most of the time, though it still periodically shoots up to 100% for a few seconds. Overall I reckon KazaaLite is now using ~15% of available cycles, rather than ~60% it was before (when it was showing the main window).

I'll let Folding@Home run overnight and make a new estimate of whether it will complete the work unit in the morning.