hi,
I've just joined today to the climate prediction project. (I've been running seti project before).
It seems to run ok, but when i click on "show graphics", an error window message appears telling me something about a C error... and no graphic window appears.
I find this error quite worrying..., and I haven't found the same problem in this forum...
I have stopped the project until I find a patch or comment about this.
I'm using a winXP with pentium4.
(seti graphics are shown ok, though not as screensavers, but I think they have a problem with the screensaver presentation).

thanx

There are several threads about graphics. The problem seems to be with ATI cards and BOINC.

What is your BOINC version, and what card do you have?

Les

hi,

sorry, I didn't find any proper thread for my problem...
my BOINC version is 4.25,
and my graphic card is an "Intel 82865G Graphics Controller" (integrated in the motherboard).

(Hope BOINC resolves these issues soon... Probably this only affects to graphics, but any bad behaviour lead to a lose of confidence in the robustness of the program...).

bye

Thanks for the info on the Intel GC. I thought it was a separate card when it was mentioned <a href="http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/forum_thread.php?id=2322"> here.</a>

Any of the threads with 'graphic' in them will gradually build up a picture. But you need to search all 6 of the
boards under Q &amp; P, as well as the 3 under message boards. Might not be worth it, as there is no definitive answer as yet.
If you do want to search, first make sure that you have the options at the top right of one of these set to
"Most recent answer first", then type in your search text under keyword search. (One page back.)
And finally, click on the Search button. Do NOT press 'Enter'. There is a bug in the search code.
I remember mention of "blank screen", and "Black screen", before, but months ago.
The one 'search' will search ALL 9 of the forums.

It is possible that, for a calculation intensive program like hadsm, a separate, modern graphics card is needed,
to take the graphics load of the cpu.
And, for the moment NOT an ATI card.
Mine is a NVIDIA Geforce FX 5900XT. Which is probably overkill, but when I was collecting parts to build this computer,
I went for overkill. And it appears to have paid off, as even 3 power failures have not stopped it.
Which is to say that, when the computer rebooted, BOINC just started again by itself.

A cheaper solution, (free, actually), may be to go back to BOINC 4.19, but I'm not sure if this has solved the problems
people have been having with the viz.
Please re-post if/when you solve the problem. Most people don't, and then we don't know what works to pass on to others.

Les

You may also try installing the latest driver for your Graphics Controller from <A HREF="http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Filter.asp?ProductID=1044">support.intel.com</A>. The latest driver is dated March 2005, so it is very likely that you don't run the newest driver.

sorry,
today I have had another issue...
the processing seem to have crashed...
may be my problem is more a calculus problem than a graphics card problem... I don't know... Are there problems also with the processing?

Here are the logs of the program:
thanks

11/04/2005 10:06:13|climateprediction.net|Started download of 2ggy_300135819.zip
11/04/2005 10:06:14|climateprediction.net|Finished download of 2ggy_300135819.zip
11/04/2005 10:06:14|climateprediction.net|Throughput 79244 bytes/sec
11/04/2005 10:06:16|climateprediction.net|Finished download of globe.tga
11/04/2005 10:06:16|climateprediction.net|Throughput 1131056 bytes/sec
11/04/2005 10:06:16|SETI@home|Pausing result 20ja05aa.942.22896.715924.200_2 (removed from memory)
11/04/2005 10:06:16|climateprediction.net|Starting result 2ggy_300135819_0 using hadsm3 version 4.12
11/04/2005 11:06:17|SETI@home|Restarting result 20ja05aa.942.22896.715924.200_2 using setiathome version 4.09
11/04/2005 11:06:17|climateprediction.net|Pausing result 2ggy_300135819_0 (removed from memory)
11/04/2005 11:06:20|climateprediction.net|Unrecoverable error for result 2ggy_300135819_0 ( - exit code -1073741819 (0xc0000005))
11/04/2005 11:06:20|climateprediction.net|Deferring communication with project for 59 seconds
11/04/2005 11:06:20|climateprediction.net|Computation for result 2ggy_300135819 finished

I've had the same problem with the same graphics controller and BOINC 4.27. I think BOINC is having lots of graphics problems at the moment!

You can read more about my investigations on <a href="http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=1163">this thread</a> at Einstein@Home.

In summary:-

I run all the "production" BOINC projects. I upgraded from 4.19 in the hope that I would get screen saver graphics. In 4.19 I got only a generic BOINC graphic which told me that because of the windows password protection on the screen saver it couldn't show project graphics but that this would be fixed in future upgrades. 4.24 didn't fix my graphics which were now blank. Even worse, once on 4.24 my Einstein science work units started crashing consistently and after quite a bit of experimenting it because apparent that graphics in one form or another, either requested directly or when the (not working properly anyway) screen saver was operating caused the problem. I stopped running them in all forms and all was well. I had the same problems with version 4.25 so stopped running graphics again after a quick experiment. One upgrade later at 4.27 I was tempted into another trial to see if the problem was cured. Graphics were better but not present on all projects. Much worse was that this trial caused a catastrophic crash in CPDN. I don't mind losing the occasional Einstein work unit 'cos they don't take so long, but I don't want to lose all the processing time in a CPDN unit. So I've abstained from graphics althogether and I won't try them again until my latest CPDN model completes. That way I won't lose much if I get another failure...

However, in the mean time, I have upgraded to the latest dev version of BIONC (4.30) which promises it fixes some problems and I'll install the Intel driver upgrade mentioned by pwillener. I'm still not risking graphics on my machine until my current CPDN model completes! But if you try either the new BOINC or the graphics driver upgrade and your system seems stable (or not!) please post a reply. I'd be interested to know!

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hi,

I installed the latest graphic controllers (http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Filter.asp?ProductID=1044), as suggested by pwillener (thanks! ;)

It seems that everything runs ok now!!!

both seti and climateprediction show the graphics in windowed mode !

both seti and climateprediction show the graphics in screensaver mode !

So far (sorry, just few hours), calculus seem to be normal...

Thank you very much for all your help, I'd never think that this problem could relay so heavily in the graphic controller...

PS: anyway, I still think that the old classic SETI graphics were much better than BOINC's ones... transparency and effects can't substitute a precise and concise represententation, at least for me... ;)

Hi all,
I am using ATI card (mobility Radeon). The graphics problem appears after 4.25 client installation (no problem with 4.19).

I have found that after all accelleration (directX and DirectDraw)
is disabled
then graphics works OK (at least in CPDN).

Hope it will help
BR ZdeSpi

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