Total noob in need of help, at this fine hour

benneh

benneh

benneh

Soldato
Joined
9 Apr 2004
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9,162
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Well, basically I tend to leave the pc idling a lot (not a great PC, just using a [email protected]/1 gig bh5/6800ultra at the mo) and I would like to put it to some use. But, i'm completely lost on how to set up F@H (I've read the stickies but i'm still lost :(). If there's anyone that could help I would really appreciate it :p .

Ben.
 
We'll do our best, thanks for taking the time to read the stickys though.

Click here to download it.

Put it in a folder, best place is c:/program files/Folding@Home.

Run it. You should see a little black screen which will ask you some questions.

Type the following to each question:

* User name: enter a username, pick one that no other OcUK folder has chosen.
* Team number: 10
* Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service: yes
* Ask before fetching/sending: no
* Use Internet Explorer settings: no.
* Use Proxy: no
* Allow receipt of work assignments and return of work results greater than 5MB in size (such work units may have large memory demands): Yes
* Change advanced options: no


Thats it. When you reboot the window will disappear. If you close the window before rebooting it stops folding.

Edit:
benneh said:
I'm off to bed. But if someone could add me to msn/post in here tomorrow it would be great. djsdontshareneedles [at] talk21 . com
Click to expand...
No hurry, someone will be around tomorrow to help out further if need be and i'll come and show you round the stats if no-one else does. Everything you need to do is posted above, the rest is just extra.
 
As Joe said we DC nerds will be here all day tomorrow (today in some places, YMMV ;) ) Tell us what the specific problem is and we'll try our darnedest to get you sorted.

If you see any problems or confusing elements regarding the FAH sticky let me know and I'll try my best to correct it for future readers. :D
 
Hi all, my my you're a friendly bunch :D .

Couple of questions regarding setting up. Firstly:

*Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service: yes

I'm not sure on this, because my systems not the fastest and I use it for a lot of video/sound editing and gaming. And being an impatient fellow I hate the idea of the system slowing down (folding appealed to me because I have the PC doing nothing for 18+ hours a day). SO am I best answering 'NO' to this and then starting the f@h console manually when i'm done editing etc?.

Secondly, because i'm using a processor with HT should I run 2 f@h consoles at once?.

Thirdly, should I do the reg edits? (i presume if i'm running 2 consoles then the reg edit will cover both?).

Think that's about it for getting it running lol.
 
We like people joining because it makes the team better and we get to beat more teams. It also gives more competition within the team. And it helps medical research even more. So its all good. :p

Folding will make way for other programs, it only uses the cpu when something else isn't using it.
i.e if you have a process using 80% cpu folding will use the remaining 20%.
It only causes slowdowns if it uses too much ram, but if that becomes a problem you can limit the ram it uses.

Yes you can run 2 f@h consoles with one for ht, but it means it uses more ram. I'm not sure if its better to do this or not, have to see what others say about this. Stick with one for now, can always add a 2nd later. Its a little bit more complicated adding a 2nd one, you can't just repeat what you did for the first one. You have to go into the advanced options and set the machine id to 2.

I don't think theres any need for reg edits, i've never done any.


Btw, the stats if you're interested in the competition aspect of it.
Team list: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_list.php?s=
Users list: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&t=10
 
Joe42 said:
snip
Click to expand...


Stats i'm into :)

With the reg-edits. I thought that there was some sort of points gain to be had? (I might have totally misread that).

And the second one I'll leave until I've got the hang of the first then.

If I answer 'no' to the start at windows startup though it wont effect folding though will it?. In the sense that once I have manually started it (which only means double clicking an icon) it's all the same?. I would prefer that because when my rendering times for video go into 5-10 hours every Mb of ram counts.
 
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benneh said:
Stats i'm into :)

With the reg-edits. I thought that there was some sort of points gain to be had? (I might have totally misread that).

And the second one I'll leave until I've got the hang of the first then.

If I answer 'no' to the start at windows startup though it wont effect folding though will it?. In the sense that once I have manually started it (which only means double clicking an icon) it's all the same?. I would prefer that because when my rendering times for video go into 5-10 hours every Mb of ram counts.
Click to expand...
No, running it manually or at windows startup won't affect performance.

I'm not aware of any registry hacks for improving performance.
As mentioned the author of the sticky is on hand to make any amendments necessary if you found a section that was confusing. Same goes for the quick guide. :)
Its helpful to us if you point out anything that was confusing and could have been explained better. Often these things are easier to see if you're reading the sticky having never set up folding before.
 
rich99million said:
If running the console manually just be sure to close it by pressing ctrl+c rather than closing the dos box itself as that'll usually cause the WU to get corrupted


Welcome to the team :)
Click to expand...

Ahh good hint, and thankyou.

I'm still confused to be honest, about some of the things in the set-up sticky. I'll wait for BillytheImpaler to come along if no-one can clarify the reg-edit/points with p4 thing. I'm determined to get it set up so it can fold some goodies while im home for Christmas :).
 
By reg edits, I reckon that benneh means adding flags like -advmethods to the service command line in the registry. This is explained in the guide and can increase your points nicely when the right WUs are available.

If you're not running the service but just starting the program from a shortcut, you'll need to add these flags to the shortcut as opposed to modifying the registry.
 
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I'll be totally honest I need someone to walk me through this on MSN, because from looking at the sticky (these two posts particularly here and here ) i'm not sure whether to perform the reg-edits (I presume not being as i'm setting it to manual, not start at windows startup etc, and as you say mattus need to edit the command line for the exe). And whether I need a second console running, because whilst using 1 console on HT it's only using 50% cpu.
 
Mattus said:
By reg edits, I reckon that benneh means adding flags like -advmethods to the service command line in the registry. This is explained in the guide and can increase your points nicely when the right WUs are available.

If you're not running the service but just starting the program from a shortcut, you'll need to add these flags to the shortcut as opposed to modifying the registry.
Click to expand...

-advmethods doesn't always make a huge difference to be honest. Most of the time I have found it better when it is switched off. The only time I change it is if I have LOTS of really bad WUs.

The other important flag is -forceasm which makes sure that any optimisations are always used. Sometimes after a crash the client forgets to turn them on which can double or even triple the amount of time a WU takes.

SiriusB
 
Mattus said:
By reg edits, I reckon that benneh means adding flags like -advmethods to the service command line in the registry. This is explained in the guide and can increase your points nicely when the right WUs are available.

If you're not running the service but just starting the program from a shortcut, you'll need to add these flags to the shortcut as opposed to modifying the registry.
Click to expand...
Indeed. It used to be that the registry edits were nearly necessary if you wanted big point output. However, v5.04 of the client made it so -advmethods could be set from the config menu.

Nowadays the reg edits are only necessary to a) force it to use assembly optimizations even after a system crash and b) tell it to use the most verbose logging available which is mighty helpful if there's a problem you want to diagnose.

If you didn't want to do the edits that's your prerogative. :)

EDIT: Too slow again :o
 
I think you're all making this too confusing talking about flags and registry edits and stuff. None of it is necessary i don't think.

The setup i showed you above leaves both -advmethods and -forceasm as default. If you wanted to change either, you would say yes to advanced options and it would ask you if you wanted them as questions.

It will say do you want to enable advmethods, allowing you to download new advanced workunits. This is set to no as default. It will also say to you want to enable optimisations (-forceasm) and you can say yes or no. The default is yes, thats what its set as currently.


Although i've never had the need to start and stop it regularly, i just set it as above and leave it.
 
If you're not installing the service, you don't need to make any registry changes. It's probably wise to make a desktop shortcut pointing to the FAH502-Console.exe / FAH504-Console.exe file.

When you've done that, you need to edit the shortcut by right-clicking on it and entering properties, flicking to the Shortcut tab, then appending the flags to the path as follows:

"C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\FAH502-Console.exe" -forceasm -verbosity 9

Clearly the path will be different depending upon where the client has been saved to.

Normally the client will disable your CPU's optimisations (SSE, SSE2) after a system crash as a precaution, which slows WUs down a lot. -forceasm forces the client to enable these optimizations all the time. -verbosity 9 logs more detailed information about the client's operation, which is helpful if it ever goes wrong.
 
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