I want my q6600 to run just 3 rosettas and anything else on the forth . running 4 boggs the system during surfing , my prefs say 3 only . but 4 Rosetta's run on a regular basis . any ideas ? the other projects are poem gpugrid and milky way .

try: tools -> computing preferences -> on multiprocessor systems use at most: 75% of the processors.

You can also do it on your pc and it will be on a pc by pc basis, meaning if you have muliple pc's you can set it differently on each one, by going into Boinc Manager, tools, computing preferences and making the same change. Be sure to click okay to make the settings work.

can anyone tell me why my wifes laptop toshiba sat. keeps running work while it is in use? the machine is set not to run and the server is set not to run I am stumped it has a 1.6 intel dual core w/ 1 gig of ram, I think another laptop I set up is having the same problems and its bogging down the system any ideas btw it will snooze if told to also how long is the snooze timer

Robby, you want to review the "preferences" on that PC, which are a local override of your web-based preferences, that pertain only to that specific machine. And just make sure that the checkbox for customized preferences is checked (if that's what you wish to do) and then what it says in the "do work after idle for..." (the "advanced" pulldown, then preferences, then processor usage tab in the advanced view). If the customized preferences box is not checked, then it's just going to use the web-based preferences, which are defined for up to 4 different venues. You can see which venue this machine is considered to be at in the messages as BOINC starts.

I believe the snooze is for 30min.

It is a BOINC setting, not specific to SETI or Rosetta or other projects. If your machine runs at say 90%, that will be true for all projects.

It does increase your idle %, but it achieves this by "cutting out" periodically. There's no good way to make a Windows program (or Linux, or Mac) run at 90% (or any other %), so they just halt the running application for 1 second periodically to achieve the overall percentage you defined. If you set to 90% for example, it halts for 1 second, then runs for 9 seconds. You saw it halt about every 20 seconds, so I suspect you had it set to us 95% of CPU.

Did you happen to define the % of CPU that BOINC should use to be something less then 100%? This is in your General Preferences (see the [participants] link at the top of this forum page).

BOINC runs at the lowest priority allowed by your machine, so it should always try to run other tasks first. But, this setting basically gives you a way to tell BOINC that you want it to pause once and a while. Sometimes people do this to control heat/cooling fan levels.

Did you happen to define the % of CPU that BOINC should use to be something less then 100%? This is in your General Preferences (see the [participants] link at the top of this forum page).

BOINC runs at the lowest priority allowed by your machine, so it should always try to run other tasks first. But, this setting basically gives you a way to tell BOINC that you want it to pause once and a while. Sometimes people do this to control heat/cooling fan levels.