BOINC had message that I'd better install a newer version - already since some weeks - so today I found I have time to do it. (BTW one is now encouraged to install BOINC together with a "virtual box" enabling "virtual machines" - but the installation of this extra made problems and I'm not sure I have it now and if yes, whether properly. For the moment I'm not asking about this, but could it be the cause of the problem I want an answer - see title & what follows?) SETI@home now pretends (in BOINC's messages) not to have the needed 32 MB disk space (but only 0) -> where does this problem come from and - more important - how do I handle it?

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Although Berkeley wants you to install BOINC with Virtualbox, seeing how a project like Seti doesn't use VBox, it isn't really necessary. That's also why you can still download just the BOINC installer from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php.

As for disk space settings, these can be set through the "Disk and memory use" section of the computing preferences, or through BOINC Manager's local advanced preferences (BOINC Manager->Advanced view->Tools->Computing preferences->Disk and memory usage). When using the latter, these override the preferences set through the web site.

To show us what you set in either place, please navigate to your BOINC Data directory, default at C:\Programdata\BOINC\ in Windows Vista (it's a hidden directory, so just fill in that path in Windows Explorer and go there) and post the contents of the global_prefs.xml file and if it exists the contents of the global_prefs_override.xml file. These XML files can be opened with Notepad, no need for a special XML editor.

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I had a similar problem with the Atlas project, and I found that it was caused by the "Use no more than x% of total disc space" setting. It turned out that that setting prevented the application from using what I had specified for the explicit disc space setting above it. Perhaps it's causing your issue?