I'm running SETI@home, World Community Grid, and malariacontrol.net on a Windows XP SP3 laptop. Since upgrading from BOINC Manager 5.10.45 to 6.2.18, I've noticed problems. In particular, I'm getting this pair of messages occasionally:
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2008-09-06 17:03:41 malariacontrol.net Computation for task wu_133_525_172558_0_1220611570_1 finished

2008-09-06 17:03:41 malariacontrol.net Output file wu_133_525_172558_0_1220611570_1_0 for task wu_133_525_172558_0_1220611570_1 absent
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Also, that same task is being reported on my BOINC task list as "Computation error".

Possibly related is a pop-up box I'm occasionally getting from Windows since the BOINC Manager upgrade. The message says that the Windows system trapped when an instruction at address <x> tried to write to address <x> (I don't remember the exact address <x>). I have DEP (Data Execution Prevention) turned on. The failure doesn't invoke Windows Error Reporting, so I haven't been able to identify the failing application.

I know that BOINC Manager 6.2.18 stores its data files in a different directory than 5.10.45. Could that be part of the problem?

All the error wu's appeared to be due to an unhandled exception. Could your computer be overheating. or have memory problems? I noticed other computers crunching the same wu's as you had errors as well, maybe there is a problem with the wu generation at the server end. I've also seen a few "absent" errors, but not as many as you've appeared to have had.

Live long and BOINC!

____________
Paul
(S@H1 8888)

All the error wu's appeared to be due to an unhandled exception. Could your computer be overheating. or have memory problems? I noticed other computers crunching the same wu's as you had errors as well, maybe there is a problem with the wu generation at the server end. I've also seen a few "absent" errors, but not as many as you've appeared to have had.

Live long and BOINC!

All the error wu's appeared to be due to an unhandled exception. Could your computer be overheating. or have memory problems? I noticed other computers crunching the same wu's as you had errors as well, maybe there is a problem with the wu generation at the server end. I've also seen a few "absent" errors, but not as many as you've appeared to have had.

Live long and BOINC!

Ah, thank you; I'd forgotten that I could go to the list of tasks, both successful and failing, that had been recorded in the project database for my computer. Yes, I see that the recently failed ones all failed due to an access violation of 0xC0000005. In particular, one of them reported:

Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01B8FB80

That message's address probably matches the Windows pop-up I've seen that reported an access violation when an instruction at address <x> tried to write to address <x>. That access violation could actually be a Data Execution Prevention (DEP) violation, since I have DEP (also known as Execute Disable = XD) enabled on my system. We'd be able to tell for sure if the error report contained the access violation type, which would be 8 for a DEP. (See Data Execution Prevention and A detailed description... for a technical description of DEP.) Either there's an anomaly in the Malariacontrol.net application that is attempting to execute an instruction in a data page, or my particular CPU is falsely detecting the error; the Intel specification update for my Intel Celeron M 370 does describe a known problem "W36" which could falsely report a DEP on a data page fault.

I'd like to try disabling DEP just for the "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86" application, but Windows XP won't let me do that because the file doesn't have an .EXE extension.

Any ideas? I don't really want to disable DEP system-wide, since it does provide some protection against malicious code.

All the error wu's appeared to be due to an unhandled exception. Could your computer be overheating. or have memory problems? I noticed other computers crunching the same wu's as you had errors as well, maybe there is a problem with the wu generation at the server end. I've also seen a few "absent" errors, but not as many as you've appeared to have had.

Live long and BOINC!

Ah, thank you; I'd forgotten that I could go to the list of tasks, both successful and failing, that had been recorded in the project database for my computer. Yes, I see that the recently failed ones all failed due to an access violation of 0xC0000005. In particular, one of them reported:

Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01B8FB80

That message's address probably matches the Windows pop-up I've seen that reported an access violation when an instruction at address <x> tried to write to address <x>. That access violation could actually be a Data Execution Prevention (DEP) violation, since I have DEP (also known as Execute Disable = XD) enabled on my system. We'd be able to tell for sure if the error report contained the access violation type, which would be 8 for a DEP. (See Data Execution Prevention and A detailed description... for a technical description of DEP.) Either there's an anomaly in the Malariacontrol.net application that is attempting to execute an instruction in a data page, or my particular CPU is falsely detecting the error; the Intel specification update for my Intel Celeron M 370 does describe a known problem "W36" which could falsely report a DEP on a data page fault.

I'd like to try disabling DEP just for the "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86" application, but Windows XP won't let me do that because the file doesn't have an .EXE extension.

Any ideas? I don't really want to disable DEP system-wide, since it does provide some protection against malicious code.

I found this: "DEP is enabled by default for all processes. Users can manually create a list of specific applications that do not have DEP applied using System in Control Panel. IT pros can use the Application Compatibility Toolkit to opt-out one or more applications from DEP protection. System Compatibility Fixes ("shims") for DEP do take effect." here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738483.aspx

All the error wu's appeared to be due to an unhandled exception. Could your computer be overheating. or have memory problems? I noticed other computers crunching the same wu's as you had errors as well, maybe there is a problem with the wu generation at the server end. I've also seen a few "absent" errors, but not as many as you've appeared to have had.

Live long and BOINC!

Ah, thank you; I'd forgotten that I could go to the list of tasks, both successful and failing, that had been recorded in the project database for my computer. Yes, I see that the recently failed ones all failed due to an access violation of 0xC0000005. In particular, one of them reported:

Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01B8FB80

That message's address probably matches the Windows pop-up I've seen that reported an access violation when an instruction at address <x> tried to write to address <x>. That access violation could actually be a Data Execution Prevention (DEP) violation, since I have DEP (also known as Execute Disable = XD) enabled on my system. We'd be able to tell for sure if the error report contained the access violation type, which would be 8 for a DEP. (See Data Execution Prevention and A detailed description... for a technical description of DEP.) Either there's an anomaly in the Malariacontrol.net application that is attempting to execute an instruction in a data page, or my particular CPU is falsely detecting the error; the Intel specification update for my Intel Celeron M 370 does describe a known problem "W36" which could falsely report a DEP on a data page fault.

I'd like to try disabling DEP just for the "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86" application, but Windows XP won't let me do that because the file doesn't have an .EXE extension.

Any ideas? I don't really want to disable DEP system-wide, since it does provide some protection against malicious code.

I found this: "DEP is enabled by default for all processes. Users can manually create a list of specific applications that do not have DEP applied using System in Control Panel. IT pros can use the Application Compatibility Toolkit to opt-out one or more applications from DEP protection. System Compatibility Fixes ("shims") for DEP do take effect." here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738483.aspx

Thanks. Looks like Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 is the link for that toolkit, but I'm a bit intimidated by reading its details. It appears I'd be downloading a database manager and a lot more, just to tweak a file. If I have the time, I might try that.

All the error wu's appeared to be due to an unhandled exception. Could your computer be overheating. or have memory problems? I noticed other computers crunching the same wu's as you had errors as well, maybe there is a problem with the wu generation at the server end. I've also seen a few "absent" errors, but not as many as you've appeared to have had.

Live long and BOINC!

Ah, thank you; I'd forgotten that I could go to the list of tasks, both successful and failing, that had been recorded in the project database for my computer. Yes, I see that the recently failed ones all failed due to an access violation of 0xC0000005. In particular, one of them reported:

Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01B8FB80

That message's address probably matches the Windows pop-up I've seen that reported an access violation when an instruction at address <x> tried to write to address <x>. That access violation could actually be a Data Execution Prevention (DEP) violation, since I have DEP (also known as Execute Disable = XD) enabled on my system. We'd be able to tell for sure if the error report contained the access violation type, which would be 8 for a DEP. (See Data Execution Prevention and A detailed description... for a technical description of DEP.) Either there's an anomaly in the Malariacontrol.net application that is attempting to execute an instruction in a data page, or my particular CPU is falsely detecting the error; the Intel specification update for my Intel Celeron M 370 does describe a known problem "W36" which could falsely report a DEP on a data page fault.

I'd like to try disabling DEP just for the "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86" application, but Windows XP won't let me do that because the file doesn't have an .EXE extension.

Any ideas? I don't really want to disable DEP system-wide, since it does provide some protection against malicious code.

I found this: "DEP is enabled by default for all processes. Users can manually create a list of specific applications that do not have DEP applied using System in Control Panel. IT pros can use the Application Compatibility Toolkit to opt-out one or more applications from DEP protection. System Compatibility Fixes ("shims") for DEP do take effect." here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738483.aspx

Thanks. Looks like Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 is the link for that toolkit, but I'm a bit intimidated by reading its details. It appears I'd be downloading a database manager and a lot more, just to tweak a file. If I have the time, I might try that.

See I thought you would be looking at the part "Users can manually create a list of specific applications that do not have DEP applied using System in Control Panel." instead. Just put Boinc on the list and if that is not enough put the "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86" application in there.

So, it looks like all of these reports are related to the same failure. Interestingly, the specific address changes from task to task.

I'll run with the DEP exclusion on "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86.", and see if the problem goes away.

So, it looks like all of these reports are related to the same failure. Interestingly, the specific address changes from task to task.

I'll run with the DEP exclusion on "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86.", and see if the problem goes away.

Here's to hoping it works!

So, it looks like all of these reports are related to the same failure. Interestingly, the specific address changes from task to task.

I'll run with the DEP exclusion on "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86.", and see if the problem goes away.

Here's to hoping it works!

Despite our high hopes, I got the error again. Most recently:

Task ID 34838139
Name wu_116_326_175377_0_1220964727_0
Workunit 11996415

Stderr has an old report:

Dump Timestamp : 09/10/08 10:50:10
Unhandled Exception Detected...
- Unhandled Exception Record -
Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01B8FB98

and one for the current task:

Dump Timestamp : 09/12/08 02:45:38
Unhandled Exception Detected...
- Unhandled Exception Record -
Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01DDFC18

I'll try putting the DEP exclusion on the BOINC manager now.

So, it looks like all of these reports are related to the same failure. Interestingly, the specific address changes from task to task.

I'll run with the DEP exclusion on "malariacontrol_5.57_windows_intelx86.", and see if the problem goes away.

Here's to hoping it works!

Despite our high hopes, I got the error again. Most recently:

Task ID 34838139
Name wu_116_326_175377_0_1220964727_0
Workunit 11996415

Stderr has an old report:

Dump Timestamp : 09/10/08 10:50:10
Unhandled Exception Detected...
- Unhandled Exception Record -
Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01B8FB98

and one for the current task:

Dump Timestamp : 09/12/08 02:45:38
Unhandled Exception Detected...
- Unhandled Exception Record -
Reason: Access Violation (0xc0000005) at address 0x01DDFC18

I'll try putting the DEP exclusion on the BOINC manager now.

Putting a DEP exclusion on all the BOINC manager executables didn't work. I've uninstalled BOINC 6.2.18, and gone back to 5.10.45. With no BOINC or project DEP exclusions in effect, that combination seems to be working fine.