Changing the Default User screen saver
For Install 3: If your machine(s) will be sitting at the login window for a majority of the time, then the screen saver for the login window should be changed so the UD/WCG saver will run:
- Launch Regedit
- Navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
- Find the SCRNSAVE.EXE key in the right pane and change it to ud.scr
- If you want to have WCG run with only a minimal delay, change the ScreenSaveTimeOut key to a much smaller number like 60 (in seconds) from the default 600 (10 minutes). This will enable the grid after 1 minute of waiting at the login window.
Issues
If you intend to install WCG as a Windows service, you might not want to do this step. Displaying the progress of a work unit using the UD screen saver does take CPU time, and reduces the overall effectiveness of the PC in returning results to the grid. Not using the UD screen saver, but running as a service quietly and full time allows optimal number crunching. However, there’s no way to monitor the status of WCG on individual machines except to watch the result upload statistics on the grid website.
Experiments have shown that the number of times that WCG will successfully launch from the login window (when not running as a service) to be only 15-40% of the time. Typically, you will only see the “World Community Grid” text and logo floating around the screen, and the WCG task is not running.
When you combine this option with converting WCG to a service, you get what seems to be the best combination. The task runs when nobody is logged in, but doesn’t run when someone is logged in.
Email the author: Peter Schepers | Last updated: Dec 6, 2006