W7 computers not getting work assignments

[barebear]

My W7 computers are not getting work assignments; this has been going on for a few days. Once in a long while one of them will get some little job. My W10 systems are having no such issue.
It's true my W7 rigs are old ( a 2014 Toshiba laptop, a desktop with a core I7 860 ) but if they're now so obsolete that they can't run FAH, I guess it's time to scrap them ?

[Joe_H]

Windows 7 hasn't been supported for some time, the occasional WU those systems have been receiving would be from some older projects using older folding cores. You might be able to run the desktop system a bit longer if upgraded to W10 or by changing the OS to Linux. The laptop would depend on what it has for hardware. But they are getting towards end of life.

[calxalot]

Win 7 is still listed as supported by the v8 client.

Are the project constraints excluding Win7?

[Joe_H]

The client build still will run on W7, the issue is some of the library support required for the newer folding cores is not available for W7. So as I recall, CPU projects using the A8 core still can run. But not those requiring the A9 core. With the GPU folding cores I don't recall the point at which W7 is too old to use.

[barebear]

In reference to my 2 old W7 laptops that aren't getting work assignments, which of the 2 processors listed below is more powerful ? LOL I'm going to give the unit with the weaker processor to someone who needs a computer and can't afford to buy one.

AMD E-450 APU

Intel core I7-2630QM 2GHz

I know this is a little off topic but the best impartial computer brains I've ever run across have been on FAH which I've been proud to contribute to since 2006. I appreciate everyone's feedback!

Thanks, barebear

[Joe_H]

Looking at the specs, the I7-2630QM appears to have the stronger CPU, but a weaker iGPU. So it might depend a bit on other factors such as software and usage as to which is "weaker".

[barebear]

And the processor in my hardware configuration (my old W7 desktop which also is no longer getting work assignments)), is stronger than both the I7-2630 QM and AMD E-450 APU ?

[Joe_H]

In raw processing power the i7-860 and I7-2630 QM are roughly the same with similar benchmarks. The I7-2630 QM being a generation newer and a mobile chip does that using about half the power. It also has the advantage of supporting the AVX instruction set, the i7-860 only supports up to SSE 4.2. That does give some performance advantages doing folding, the newer CPU folding cores do support use of AVX and perform better when that is available. Main advantage the desktop system will have is probably a better cooling system than a laptop.

P.S. I ran a 2009 iMac with an i7-860 processor for years, also running folding. Only retired it a few years ago when the PS failed. As I recall it would produce about 12,000 or so PPD.

[barebear]

It's so sad that there's nothing I can download that would let these oldies keep on working. Please, if you hear of anything I can do in terms of a download modification, I'm ready to try.

[barebear]

Maybe someone could develop something - there are so many W7 rigs that would be able to use it and help FAH production - maybe some oldies lover can be persuaded...?

[calxalot]

Maybe BOINC or some other distributed computing project would be a fit? Something with loose deadlines.

[barebear]

I found this: fah-installer_7.6.21_x86.exe . It's described as being for (Windows 7+ 32/64-bit).
Is there a chance that if I uninstall the current FAH installation on my Win 7 rigs and install this I could once again be producing work units?
I found the installer here: https://foldingathome.org/v7-client/ after doing a Startpage search " Make Folding at Home run on Windows 7 "
Did I get lucky? Am I on to something?
As for my NVIDIA GTS 250, I found this at NVIDIA.com:
GeForce 341.96 Driver
Version: 341.96 WHQL
Release Date: 2016.8.17
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit
Language: English (US)
File Size: 340.45 MB

Please advise, I'd be ecstatic to get this working on my desktop with an Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Proc.BX80605I7860 and video card GeForce GTS 250 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support -- they're described in my hardware configuration below.

This computer always has and will run 24/7 -- I read that that was necessary for things to run successfully.

[appepi]

Hi barebear: Out of curiosity I installed the outdated version of foldingathome from the link you gave, using a 2011-vintage Z800 that has a minimal 4-core (8 thread) X5620 CPU (released Q1 2010) whose Geekbench 6 performance (1 core/Multicore)) is 364/1223 and thus similar to but lower than than your i7-860 (447/1453, released Q3 2009)). Its main job is to run a RAID array of 6 x 4TB drives for backups, so it doesn't need much CPU power, but it also does some occasional GPU folding using an ASUS Turbo GTX 1080. [See Donor Z805 stats]. It all works OK. Details below:

Z805 happens to be a dual boot machine with both W7Pro and W10 installed. The W7 is for occasional hardware tests. So, for this test I set it up as Donor z805_W7 under W7 as I usually do for W10 on my folding devices, limiting GPU maxtemp to 70 Deg with GPUTweak. These days I don't do CPU folding at all, but for the test I let z805_W7 install a CPU client as well, and it immediately picked up a job. Even though there is no updating of Chrome for W7 any more, the last version [109.0.5414.120] that I had running is quite happy with the LAR-Systems "Folding in the dark" extension. It is currently maxing out 7 logical CPU's according to HP Performance Advisor but they are staying cool at 64 deg C according to HWinfo. The CPU is completing about 1500 PPD per Logical Processor and it claims that it will finish the job in a day (timeout 2 days). Meanwhile the GPU is maxing out the other logical processor and generating about 1.1 Million PPD, which seems a bit low but it may just be the WU in question.

I note that there is a GTS450 but no GTS 250 in the LARS GPU database. For performance the GTS 450 ranks #362 out of 382 GPU's, so maybe the 250 quite make it. The LARS CPU database has a i7 860 at 3816 PPD per logical processor, or twice what my X5620's are doing (not in Lars database (yet!).

[Marcos FRM]

I'm not sure if this is related to your issue, but since version 8.3.6, the code responsible for loading DLLs requires the KB2533623 update on Windows 7.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2533623

Edit
It has been superseded by KB3063858:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3063858
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/secu ... n/MS15-063

See:

https://github.com/CauldronDevelopmentL ... issues/152
https://github.com/CauldronDevelopmentL ... 5cd52398fe

[Joe_H]

The GTS 250 is too old to be used for folding. It is based on the Tesla microarchitecture, the oldest Nvidia GPUs supported are based on Kepler which is 2 generations newer. Kepler GPUs will fold using OpenCL code paths, newer GPUs based on later microarchitectures will use CUDA. The Fermi GPUs (for example GTS 450) between Tesla and Kepler used to be supported, that ended several years ago.