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Questions and Answers : Windows : service
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Dave(The Admiral)Nelson

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Message 1723996 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 22:30:59 UTC

what does the phrase "run as a service" mean?
Dave Nelson
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Message 1724001 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 22:42:54 UTC - in response to Message 1723996.  

When a program runs as a service under Windows, it will run in the background, at Windows log on and even when no one is logged on, but the computer is still on.

You can see what kind of services run on your Windows by searching for services.msc and starting that when found.

When BOINC runs as a service, it can do science at the log-on screen with no one logged in. It doesn't need the BOINC Manager (but then it doesn't need that for the user install either, the client can run perfectly fine by itself).

Two things though, when checking in Windows Task Manager, you'll have to click "show processes from all users", because the BOINC processes run under BOINC's own limited user accounts.

The other thing is that GPUs cannot be used for calculations, because the drivers run in a different session from the user account. This is a Windows security measure, it cannot be fixed or circumvented by BOINC. Without being able to see the driver components needed to do calculations with, BOINC cannot detect capable GPUs.
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Dave(The Admiral)Nelson

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Message 1724242 - Posted: 10 Sep 2015, 14:17:31 UTC - in response to Message 1724001.  

Thank you, I don't understand a lot of that but it gives me something to work on.
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Message 1725101 - Posted: 12 Sep 2015, 16:09:52 UTC - in response to Message 1724242.  

Why BOINC cannot detect capable GPUs?
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Message 1725144 - Posted: 12 Sep 2015, 18:37:45 UTC

Because of the way Windows manages GPUs in relation to a service.
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Message 1725713 - Posted: 14 Sep 2015, 15:52:44 UTC - in response to Message 1725101.  

Why BOINC cannot detect capable GPUs?


Because anything that runs as a service runs in the SYSTEM context. Because of security principles that have changed in Windows, the SYSTEM context has been sandboxed off from the user context to prevent malicious software in the user context from being able to corrupt the entire system, and to prevent buggy drivers from crashing the entire system.

The libraries for GPU crunching are loaded in the user context, therefore a SYSTEM context application cannot access those libraries.

There is no way for BOINC to fix or bypass this.
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Questions and Answers : Windows : service


 
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