Folding Forum

What happens when/if I "press" the Stop Folding poke point? Does a Start Folding appear? Does the work unit in progress suspend or abort? Implications?

I am assuming you mean in the Web Control. If it is working properly, you should get a prompt for whether you want to pause folding right away or finish the current WU and then stop without downloading a new WU.

In the advanced control panel, aka FAHControl, these choices are explicit. You have separate buttons for pausing and finishing.

Thank you Joe, it sounds like it will do what I want. Where is the advanced control panel? I've looked around the pages I can see, but not seen anything that looks better than what I have. I've tried the link it dropped on my desktop, but that just takes me back to yet another copy of the website.

There's a couple of ways to open the advanced control panel

1). Start -> Folding@home -> FAHControl

2). Click the FAH bubble in the taskbar notifications -> Advanced Control

Neither of those options appears to be available. Folding@home is not on my start list, there are no "bubbles" (?) on my task bar. Never mind, I think I have enough info for now.

What operating system are you running?

Windows 8.1 x64.

I don't know what you mean when you say "bubbles in the taskbar"... As I said though, I think I have what I need now, I've not tried it yet, but I don't envisage a problem.

When the FAH Client runs the icon which appears in the notification area of your taskbar (beside the clock) is a red/yellow/green/blue blob of "bubbles".
It is possible that you are not seeing all your notification icons, in which case you should be looking for an "up" arrow on the left of this area which will give you a popup with more notification icons.

The advanced control panel is not a web page. It is a program which is packaged with the FAH Client and installed at the same time.

Windows 8.1 is the version where the Start button was restored but I'm not so sure on how much of the Start menu was restored.
You should be able to click the Start Button, find the folder named Folding@home from the programs list, and finally find the link named FAHControl.
I also imagine the start page should have an option to "list all apps" and it should be in there somewhere.

I have to admit, I bypassed Windows 8 when I saw the destruction Microsoft had wreaked by removing the Start button. I also skipped Windows 8.1 because I didn't think enough of the Start menu had been restored.

Okay, I have found this by using the up arrow near the clock. BOINC is in there as well, but not an issue, I run the manager from the File Explorer. The Start button might be on the page that appears when I need to reboot the machine, (rarely done), it has about 10 very large icons on it, I ignore this and go directly to "Desktop", I can see my compilers, editors and tools from there.

I went back to Windows 8.1. I did the upgrade to 10 when it first appeared, it was free, but it didn't last long, I had original boot media for 8.1 and put that back. I think I've seen that 11 is either released or about to be so, I'll put it on my girls laptop and have a look. She only seems to use the thing for mail and web so I doubt it will affect her day to day. I don't put BOINC on there, laptops aren't really built for that kind of loading, they die heat death easily. All is miniturised to make them sexier to sell, but renders them usless for anything serious.

I would look into Windows 11 before trying to upgrade.

The positive - It was released 3 weeks ago.

The negative - It has a requirement for TPM 2.0, most systems/laptops built in the last 5 years either have it or an equivalent. Anything older has a question mark over it.
Some motherboards, up to 10 years old, can be upgraded with an aftermarket module.
I don't believe an equivalent option exists for older laptops.

Windows 11 also has a requirement for the CPU to be fairly recent, as in Intel core 8th gen, or AMD Ryzen 3000+ with a couple in the 2000 series.

aetch wrote:It has a requirement for TPM 2.0, most systems/laptops built in the last 5 years either have it or an equivalent. Anything older has a question mark over it.
Some motherboards, up to 10 years old, can be upgraded with an aftermarket module.

Modern Ryzen CPUs have fTPM, firmware based TPM, which usually has to be enabled in BIOS. That's how I can upgrade my PC to Windows 11, if and when I want to.

Maybe it's still possible to upgrade to Windows 10, see https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/14/2106 ... 10-free-os.

Windows 10
Upgrading to Windows 10 is still an option, I did it with an Acer netbook just a few weeks ago.
I did an in-place upgrade from Windows 7 home to Windows 10 home and it activated just fine.
The thing runs like crap so I'm now weighing up my options for a lighter operating system to run on it.

Windows 11
Windows 11 does not have a requirement for a recent CPU, it has a requirement for a "1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with 2 or more cores on a compatible 64-bit processor or System on a Chip (SoC)."
Uefi and Secure boot have been on motherboards for the past decade.
I/You can buy TPM 2.0 chips for systems going back to Sandy-bridge.
The recent CPU thing is a misconception which likely came about because those processors (Intel Gen 8/Ryzen/etc) have the TPM 2.0 baked in. Granted, they may not call it "TPM 2.0".
The problem is that you can have a system with Uefi, secure boot and a processor powerful enough to run Windows 11 but the TPM 2.0 requirement blocks a number of users as the motherboard lacks the header to accept the TPM chip.

In some projects, it does appear that Linux systems achieve higher performance than Windows systems, due to less overhead. However, Windows tends to have easier driver support for GPU folding - generally speaking.

I have just had an online "chat" with ASUS. The motherboards in my systems, Sabertooth Z170 Mk1, are not on the list of their models that support Windows 11. I need to find a new supplier.