BOINC 6.12.34 ok in Windows 8 Dev Preview

[AMDave]

BOINC 6.12.34 runs ok in Windows 8 Dev Preview
BOINC didn't install on the first try.
Had to re-do and select Advanced settings during the setup and select the 'use unprivileged account' check box.
That worked.
ran a couple of short-wu tests.
surveill completed and validated
mersenne all failed at about 10 seconds.
CAS completed and validated.
chess960 could not find a suitable platform.

Only running a couple of BOINC WUs then shutting the VM down. Lots of other things to do.
Just waiting for a wu-prop wu to finish before shutdown so the data is collected for the records.
There will be some issues to be sure, but the devs will likely lead the curve with new versions of client apps where necessary.

Interesting things installing Win8 in a VM:
The VM HDD default was 8GB. Win8 installer said no, needs 10GB.
Made a 12GB VM HDD installer said recommended size is 17.5GB
Made a 20GB VM HDD installed no problems.

I haven't tried it but it looks like the installer may allow you to install across multiple drives with the 'extend' feature. Nice.

After copying the Windows files, the installer took an age to expand them.
The install might have been faster with more cpus.
I did the install with 2 cpus available.
After the install I stopped the VM and added additional cpus.
Win8 shows them as available in the Device list but the OS does not recognize them or use them or allow any app to use the additional cores available.
Other editions of win have picked up changes in the number of available cpus in a VM without any problem.
I can't see a way to force it to recognize them even after hardware change detection and os reboots.
I'll try a fresh install tomorrow with max cpus for the full effect.

Tested various sound h/w but drivers not found for ac97 or es1370.
pcspkr not recognized in the device list at all.
but this is in a vm so not a real test.
Others have posted that all of their drivers have been found.

Observed various errors and warnings in event logs about registry locks and services that didn't always start on boot and sent them back to MS.

Quite a clean usable interface even with the mouse.
A few different behaviours around window management, but once you get used to the start menu not being there you get used to clicking on the desktop tile in metro.
It is not bad as some of the xenophobes are wailing about.
Tried out various apps.
I quickly found thru process of elimination that ctrl-ESC sends apps to 'background running' and returns you to metro.
There's a few posts around already where folks like myself have got stuck in an app so this is an important thing to learn.
Maybe they will bring back Alt-F4 and ctrl-W, who knows.
Quite a few changes in the land of keyboard shortcuts, but that's not the aim of this edition of win anyway.

Getting back to some more serious stuff now. Just thought I'd let you know that BOINC works

[NeoGen]

Is there still Blue Screens or have they changed color already? I mean... it's about time for a change... that ugly blue comes all the way from the Win95 days! (or maybe even earlier? But I don't remember Win 3.1 ever crashing....)

[AMDave]

Nice question.

You barely see a BSOD in Win7 because they implemented the auto-restart after the crash dump, but they are still there in Win7.
I have one win7 high-end workstation (lots of RAM, cores and GPU and HDD resource) that frequently 'resets' during multi-media and game-play without a BSOD and that gives me the irrits but all the rest play very nicely.
Interestingly the WinXP box has behaved itself very well for a long time now ( /me knocks on wood )

I have not yet seen a BSOD in Win8DevPreview.
Being a pre-beta that is a very good thing.
But I have not tried a full fledged install with all the drivers that a casual user might need.
That is not the purpose of my tests and I'm not going to go looking for issues like that until it hits the consumer market.
There are Devs and other Pros and teams of Business Partner staffers that do a lot of that now in these early stages with great efficiency.

If the BSOD is finally gone that would be great, but I'd expect that the dump information is redirected and available elsewhere.
I have noted that the Event log details keep getting better so it's probably made it in there by now.
I am sure there is more detail on this in the Win7 and Win8 spec. docs, but I concede that I'm a lot less interested in the details of windows these days.
My file server, workstations, databases and webs servers run under various linux distros, although I can't vouch for the new CISCO router yet :P
Even my Win7 laptop serves as a MS doc editor only. The rest of the time its running a linux VM as a dev platform. (I should reverse that some time)

So no sign of the BSOD yet.

PS - Win 3.1 crashed to a Black Screen of Death, but it still crashed plenty.
But back in those days we didn't give a damn if it crashed to a polka dot screen.
As long as we could restart and open Kermit, Gopher, Cardfile and WordPerfect to get our assignments in on time and work on abc123 to see who was winning the Pool contest, we were all very pleased
IIRC which I probably don't.
I remember spending a lot more time on VMS and Ultrix on PDP-11 and VAX and DECterminals than I ever did on win 3.1 or even WIn 3.11 for workgroups for that matter.
I also remember getting so annoyed with Windows that I went back to MD-DOS and DrDOS for ages to keep my DOS apps and games working. hahaha Nothing every really changes, does it.

[Dirk Broer]

Tried installing BOINC on Windows8, also had to choose for the 'use unprivileged account', and had to start BOINC.EXE manually as well.
But now it runs, with my HD 4770, till I reach the 10 million in Collatz

[Dirk Broer]

Microsoft video driver update created havoc, had to re-install the Catalyst 11.9 drivers and, as before,
manually start BOINC.exe in order to get Windows 8 to see and use the GPU.

[ertank]

I see that even we install BOINC.exe as a service, there is a way to have it use GPU under Windows 8 Developer Preview. I checked parameters for BOINC.exe, but could not figure what and how to use.

Some examples will be appreciated.

[Dirk Broer]

It boils down to not to run it as a service and manually start first BOINC.exe and then the boinc manager

[AMDave]

Hi there, ertank. Welcome to the AMD Users forum.
from my first post in this thread:

... select Advanced settings during the setup and select the 'use unprivileged account' check box.

Make sure you install the right client and GPU drivers for your architecture, x86 (32-bit) or x86_64 (64-bit) - don't mix.
If you have trouble with 64-bit, then remove the driver and the client, then install the 32-bit versions of GPU drivers and BOINC client.
If the BOINC client does not detect the GPU driver, then you may have to try a different version of the driver.

I did not run GPU in the Windows 8 dev preview.
There are no guarantees, it is the DEV version after all.

Older versions of the BOINC client may not work, newer versions of the BOINC client are still in development and may not work.
But that version should get you up and running
As Dirk Broer suggests, I did not run the BOINC client as a service in Windows 8 Dev Prev.
The BOINC client installer does not yet support Windows 8, but I believe they are working on it in the new versions under development.

[Dirk Broer]

I did try to run BOINC 6.12.34 as a service in Win8-64 (using the 64-bit version), but only the manager starts up and tries in vain to search for the client.
So I stop the manager, go to the Boinc directory and manually start BOINC.exe. When I see the command line appear I also start the manager manually.
I have installed the latest catalystdrivers for my HD 4770 and it does a pretty mean Moo! Wrapper and dito MilkyWay and sometimes Collatz when MilkyWay runs out of work.

[ertank]

1) When I install 6.12.34 it installs as unpreviledged account. It also sets itself as a service which runs OK.
2) However, it does not recognize my nVidia gtx 580 GPU. I stop service. Set it to start manually. Run BOINC.exe manually. On the command prompt, it recognizes my GPU.
3) If I run BOINC.exe manually, and try to run manager manually. I get an error message saying that it could not connect to boinc service.

Any advises as to my number 3 problem?