Pausing Seti while taskmanager is running?

[Def]

My friend recently upgraded his computer from a lowly P2-350 to a blazing fast(to him) Duron 1Ghz on an nForce board(very nice MoBo btw). He used to run Seti as a favor for me because I was letting him borrow 128MB SDRAM, thus tripling his total RAM and making his POS last a few extra months.

Now that he's got Windows XP on his box, he doesn't like that Seti pegs the processor usage to 100%. So he said he would run it as long as he could tell what percentage of CPU other programs were taking(by looking at the line graph for CPU usage). I know its weird, but it's a good 4 WU's a day if I can find a way to install it.

So after some thinking, I came up with the idea to pause Seti as a service whenever taskmgr.exe is running. I'm not really sure if that's possible, but it's the only way I could see to do it.

So any way to do this guys? Some example script would be nice, as spitting that stuff out is not my fortay.

Thanks,
Defster

 

[micron]

SetiHide now has a feature to "pause" the seti client while certain programs are open. Taken from the SetiHide site:

<< 6.1.3 The "halt_if_running.txt" file
Enter path and filename of any application that is supposed to pause the SETI client. Recommended for disk defraggers, scan disk utilities or even taskmgr.exe on NT... ;-)
e.g.:
c:\windows\defrag.exe
c:\windows\scandskw.exe >>

 

[MoFunk]

So do you then use setihide in stead of seti driver? I downloaded and I have driver working and it says current WU 12.65% and then setihide says .780% done? Are they working on two different things?

 

[micron]

<< So do you then use setihide in stead of seti driver? >>

Yes, they are kinda alike, SetiHide will cache WUs, etc.

<< I downloaded and I have driver working and it says current WU 12.65% and then setihide says .780% done? Are they working on two different things? >>

It looks like they are, you need to use one or the other, not both at the same time.

 

[MoFunk]

So If I decided to start using setihide, what would happen to the WU that the driver is working on, will it just start that one over?

 

[micron]

<< So If I decided to start using setihide, what would happen to the WU that the driver is working on, will it just start that one over? >>

SetiHide probably downloaded its own WUs, so unless you transferred the WUs from your setidriver folder to wherever SetiHide puts WUs, it would more than likely be left alone.

 

[MoFunk]

Yep that is how it works. I think I will finish the WU's I have in Seti Driver now and then give that Seti Hide a try. It looks interesting.

 

[micron]

<< Yep that is how it works. I think I will finish the WU's I have in Seti Driver now and then give that Seti Hide a try. It looks interesting. >>

It's a pretty cool program, I use it on all my remote machines.

 

[MoFunk]

Once I get my home network running that is exactly what I was planning. Can you give me a little heads up though. You said that you are using it on all your client PC's. What are you using on your server to download the cache? I was thinking of using SetiHide on my PC (the server) but is there something better I should use? If so what would you suggest I use on my PC to keep crunching? Thanks.

 

[micron]

My main machine runs Win2k, I run the seti cli service to crack, and I use Seti Queue running as a service for my cache on it. I then have two other computers here at home running a win9x/me cli service install, they point to my Seti Queue for WUs. I use SetiHide on all the computers at my dad's office, each machine has a cache of at least 10 and flushes automatically. I would recommend you use Seti Queue as your cache and SetiHide to crunch. If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

 

[MoFunk]

Thanks Micron. I will give that a go when I get my network up. Thanks for your help.

 

[whpromo]

<<

<< So If I decided to start using setihide, what would happen to the WU that the driver is working on, will it just start that one over? >>

SetiHide probably downloaded its own WUs, so unless you transferred the WUs from your setidriver folder to wherever SetiHide puts WUs, it would more than likely be left alone. >>



Good info, I am having the same issue on my Win XP machine. However, I am new to the SETI project ( GO Team Anandtech! ) and am not familiar enough to know how to transfer the cache. Could someone explain this please? Also want to know if current WU being processed needs to be stopped and how transmit works. Do I need to stop Autotransmit when I shift the currently cached work?

Dangerous Dan

P.S. I was also running the Seti Driver (non-GUI) on my Win 2K box and it crashed to a restart when the program tried to transmit a completed WU. I got an error message when the machine self rebooted that said it could not find my drives. I turned off the computer, waited, then rebooted, and everything else loaded fine except for the SETI driver. It was in the startup folder, but is not there now. I had done a restart prior to this and it started up from the boot just fine. Also it appears to be starting to process the WU it had finished all over again. Any clues as to why this would happen?

P.S.S. I am using a peer to peer network (ie. a workgroup), no domain atm. That will change in a week or so.

 

[micron]

I'm not really sure how to move the WUs, I always start fresh.

 

[Def]

Thanks for the reply. I've used SetiHide before, but wasn't aware that it had this feature.

 

[MoFunk]

<< SetiHide now has a feature to "pause" the seti client while certain programs are open. Taken from the SetiHide site:

<< 6.1.3 The "halt_if_running.txt" file
Enter path and filename of any application that is supposed to pause the SETI client. Recommended for disk defraggers, scan disk utilities or even taskmgr.exe on NT... ;-)
e.g.:
c:\windows\defrag.exe
c:\windows\scandskw.exe >>

>>



Hmm. Another question. What is this supposed to pause? I tried it and used MS Word as an example. I edited to halt file and brought up taks manager. There was no drop in CPU usage when I opened word. Did I do something wrong? I put in c:\program files\microsoft office\office\winword.exe This is the location on Word on my system. Hmm.

 

[micron]

<< Thanks for the reply. I've used SetiHide before, but wasn't aware that it had this feature. >>

It was just introduced in the lastest version .



<< Hmm. Another question. What is this supposed to pause? I tried it and used MS Word as an example. I edited to halt file and brought up taks manager. There was no drop in CPU usage when I opened word. Did I do something wrong? I put in c:\program files\microsoft office\office\winword.exe This is the location on Word on my system. Hmm. >>

It should pause SETI, I'm not sure exactly how you use it though, I've never tried. I found this threads on the SetiHide forums: http://www.forumromanum.de/member/forum/forum.cgi?USER=user_87236&ACTION=view&ENTRY=1008644048&mainid=1008644048

 

[micron]

MoFunk, I just downloaded SetiHide and the seti cli, I installed both and tried the "halt_if_running.txt". I found that when I added programs it didn't work until I restarted SetiHide (i.e. closed it and opened it again.). So to get it to work you should have to:

1. Add whatever programs you want to halt SETI (i.e. c:\winnt\system32\taskmgr.exe)
2. Save halt_if_running.txt
3. Restart SetiHide (Unless you closed it before you edited "halt_if_running.txt")
4. Start SetiHide

5. See if it works!

Please LMK if it works for you!