emcinerney said:

That's what I'm doing. I rarely if ever log in directly as the Local Admin account. Hope I'm able to help you.


This sounds like it was installed as a Windows service upon the initial installation, since I don't believe the 'boinc_users' group (or any local groups or users) are created when you install it not as a service. I would actually uninstall completely.


Those instructions [to create the groups] really apply when it's running automatically as a Windows service. Those groups/users allow that user to run BOINC Manager (boincmgr.exe), but the actual boinc.exe and the science binaries are run under the service account.

David Anderson also commented that many of the articles there are years/decades out of date.

Personally -- as much as I would prefer to have it run as a service so I don't have to stay logged in 24/7 -- I've had issues with BOINC under Windows when installed as a service. I reinstalled as a non-service and only run it when logged in as the standard user account 24/7 and just lock the computer when I'm not using it.


There's a 64-bit version of the BOINC application. I'd uninstall the current 32-bit version and re-download the 64-bit one directly from https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php


Yep, that's what that install option does: it creates a BOINC Windows service along with the local users and local groups and sets the NTFS permissions accordingly. It's a pain since if you have multiple standard user accounts and don't want the BOINC Manager to pop up when they log in, it's wonky getting the Options in BOINC Manager to stick. As well as sometimes playing with the Registry.


Bravo! I remember when I stopped tempting fate by running as Local Admin as my daily driver! It's been a great change in mindset. Anyways, the way the current architecture is designed for BOINC and BOINC Manager to be installed and run as a Windows service is wonky as heck, and there's a nice long discussion on them totally re-designing how it's done to take advantage of a bunch of new security features in Windows. Here's the link on the BOINC GitHub page to that discussion:
[WIP] Boinc security and user separation improvement - Pull Request #2831

Point being, at this point it's more of a pain to run BOINC as a Windows service rather than just as the standard user account. I think with regard to what you are seeing, it looks like it was installed originally as a Windows service (or at least thinks it was), so a fresh install seems the most sane approach. Plus I think it's just better running the 64-bit instead of the 32-bit.

Just thinking about this, you can make the service install to launch only manually in the service properties of services.msc. Then when the user is added to the appropriate groups, you could set BOINC Manager to launch the client. Just not sure as vaguely recollect, BM would not do that, but the other options suggest so with tick boxes for

Run Manager at Login
Run The Client

If that (does not) works, let us either way.

Berkeley does offer x86, but it senses the OS connecting and pushes the right bit size. There's an All versions link to get at other and older releases to include beta versions.

32 bit has no impact at all on performance. It is still able to manage the science apps that are available in 64 bit, most of them at WCG.

Edit: The All Versions link.https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php

You going into advanced and taking options like All User IS an administrator level activity. It's also the place to choose if service or not. Just tried with the latest beta and that was ticked. To be expected as my current install is service.

That screen gives the option to choose where to install the data as well. Separate disk partition or fast USB memory drive is optimal.

Anyways, good you're running now in User Signed in only mode.