Noob hardware advice, please

[weedacres]

What does FahMon tell you about the ppd you are getting on this laptop?

Fahmon shows 413.28 PPD, just a tad shy of your numbers, eh?

I tried setting vmware-vmx to run as administrator, not sure if it took, didn't note any change as well.

I am going to look at tear's thread (again, as a lot of it went right over my head the first go round), see if I can find anything else to try.

tear's fix is certainly worth trying. I haven't heard of the 2.10 problem causing this much of a penalty but anything is possible.
I was also going to suggest that you stop notfreds and restart it with the command line making sure that the smp parm is in the command string.

You can enter the notfreds world by typing in:
root
cd /etc/folding/1
killall fah6
after it winds down this is the point where you would enter tear's fix -- export MPICH_NO_LOCAL=1
./fah6 -smp 4

Press Ctl &Alt at the same time to get your cursor back.

I had another thought. Run cpu-z and see what speed your cpu is running at. I wonder if the laptop is slowing the clock down.

[Slowride]

When I get to the point to enter "./fah6 -smp 4", it says not found. Am I missing something?

Cpu-z shows a core speed of 2527.1MHz. It showed about the same before I restarted VMware

[weedacres]

When I get to the point to enter "./fah6 -smp 4", it says not found. Am I missing something?

Cpu-z shows a core speed of 2527.1MHz. It showed about the same before I restarted VMware

Presumably then you got into notfreds command prompt, you should see a # as the prompt.
It's possible it set up as instance 2, in which case you'd change directories to:
cd /etc/folding/2

Those are forward slashes not reverse, with a space after cd.

When you get there if you type in ls you should see fah6 and all of it's companion files.

[Slowride]

Ok, I think I missed the space after cd. Now it told me that "This client only supports 64-bit linux macines. Your machine was detected as ''. Folding@Home Client Shutdown."

[weedacres]

Ok, I think I missed the space after cd. Now it told me that "This client only supports 64-bit linux macines. Your machine was detected as ''. Folding@Home Client Shutdown."

Ok, lets backup a couple of steps and make sure we're on the same page.
My assumption is that you are running VMWare Player 3, and that you have downloaded the notfreds Folding Virtual Appliance from here:
http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/

Once downloaded you unzip the file which creates a folder called "folding".
Fire up player, and Open Existing VM or Team (it may say something different, I use workstation). Point it to the folding folder and open folding.vmx
You should see it opening up and towards the end it will show the ip address of this folding client. Open a browser to that ip address and you'll see the Diskless Folding screen. It'll have notfreds name and team number, the number of processors found which should be 2, SMP instance per 4 CPUs, and towards the bottom will show which instance number is open - generally 1,
and a link to Reconfigure this host,,,
Click on Reconfigure and enter your userid, team number and workgroup name, then click the Reconfigure button.
After it comes back in a minute or so you'll still see the old information. Towards the middle of the page you'll see:
Remote reboot: enabled
Click on the enabled link and you'll see:
Click here to reboot this diskless folder

When you do that you'll see Player reboot the folding client. When that is done and the client is to the point where it's the type in "root" message you should be able to go back to the browser and either reload the Diskless Folding page. If all of that has gone well you should see your username, team number and workgroup name, and you should be merrily folding away.

Is this the process you've followed?

[Slowride]

My assumption is that you are running VMWare Player 3, and that you have downloaded the notfreds Folding Virtual Appliance from here:
http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/

Once downloaded you unzip the file which creates a folder called "folding".
Fire up player, and Open Existing VM or Team (it may say something different, I use workstation). Point it to the folding folder and open folding.vmx
You should see it opening up and towards the end it will show the ip address of this folding client. Open a browser to that ip address and you'll see the Diskless Folding screen. It'll have notfreds name and team number, the number of processors found which should be 2, SMP instance per 4 CPUs, and towards the bottom will show which instance number is open - generally 1,
and a link to Reconfigure this host,,,
Click on Reconfigure and enter your userid, team number and workgroup name, then click the Reconfigure button.
After it comes back in a minute or so you'll still see the old information. Towards the middle of the page you'll see:
Remote reboot: enabled

Your assumtion is 100% correct up to this point. I did not click on the remote boot enabled link. I honestly don't remember exactly how I rebooted it. I saw that it didn't update the userid and team so I think I suspended the process, re-opened the Ip address, and clicked reset, I believe. When it restarted, it showed the correct userid and team, thought I was GTG.

[weedacres]

Ok, I think I missed the space after cd. Now it told me that "This client only supports 64-bit linux macines. Your machine was detected as ''. Folding@Home Client Shutdown."

And after the killall fah6 you get this when you do:
./fah6 -smp 4



I'm going to dl Player 3 and see if I get the same thing.

[Slowride]

Right, after I entered ./fah6 -smp 4, it said it was detected as ' '. Then the shutdown message.

When I would start VMware previous to entering:

root
cd /etc/folding/1
killall fah6
export MPICH_NO_LOCAL=1
./fah6 -smp 4,

I was getting an error that VMware didnt support 64 bit on a 32 bit something or another and that virtualization was not turned on. I went back into bios to ensure that it had been enabled. That error was replaced by the above error.

[weedacres]

Sorry, replaced by which error?

FYI linux is case sensitive, so entering ./FAH6 instead of ./fah6 will cause the file not found message you had earlier.

I just removed Workstation and installed Player 3 on one of my 2 core folders. I don't see any errors. I wanted to try it anyway to see how player 3 performance compared to workstation.

[Slowride]

Sorry I wasn't clear in previous post. I was getting the unsupported 64 bit message until I entered the data you suggested including tears's fix. Then I received the machine was detected as ' ' error, and the Folding@Home Client Shutdown message. No new error messages since that.

Now the good news: I'm down to 25min a cycle, PPD is up to 1480.0 with both VMware and CPU Client running. It looks like it downloaded a new core as well. It is a P2677, with a core name of SMP Gromacs CVS whereas the previous core was a P2669 and was just called Gromacs.

Is that about what is to be expected or is there still room for improvement?

Your efforts have tripled the PPD! Thank you for your patience!

[Slowride]

Update: 23 min a % and 1557PPD

[uncle fuzzy]

Sorry I wasn't clear in previous post. I was getting the unsupported 64 bit message until I entered the data you suggested including tears's fix. Then I received the machine was detected as ' ' error, and the Folding@Home Client Shutdown message. No new error messages since that.

Now the good news: I'm down to 25min a cycle, PPD is up to 1480.0 with both VMware and CPU Client running. It looks like it downloaded a new core as well. It is a P2677, with a core name of SMP Gromacs CVS whereas the previous core was a P2669 and was just called Gromacs.

Is that about what is to be expected or is there still room for improvement?

Your efforts have tripled the PPD! Thank you for your patience!

Wait...you're running an SMP client in a VM AND a CPU client?

[Slowride]

Wait...you're running an SMP client in a VM AND a CPU client?

Well, er, actually... The VMware was running so much better I thought I would try it? Please refer to OP title. I wasn't initially though. Anyway it hung so I shut it down.

[uncle fuzzy]

Are we still dealing with #7 on your list? The SMP client, whether in Windows or a VM, wants/needs/will take the full resources of a dual core cpu, leaving nothing for any other cpu client.

Your points are still low for the VM. Are there any power saving settings in BIOS that you can disable? I also have a C2D Vista laptop (T6400, 2GHz). It doesn't have VT, so I can't run a VM, but to maximize output with the Windows SMP, I had to make a custom power setting for max performance- no slow downs, no turning anything off (except the monitor after 20 minutes). I had max performance and minimum battery life, but I left it plugged in, so who cares.

Check BIOS and Windows for anything that could be downclocking your cpu.

[weedacres]

Sorry I wasn't clear in previous post. I was getting the unsupported 64 bit message until I entered the data you suggested including tears's fix. Then I received the machine was detected as ' ' error, and the Folding@Home Client Shutdown message. No new error messages since that.

Now the good news: I'm down to 25min a cycle, PPD is up to 1480.0 with both VMware and CPU Client running. It looks like it downloaded a new core as well. It is a P2677, with a core name of SMP Gromacs CVS whereas the previous core was a P2669 and was just called Gromacs.

Is that about what is to be expected or is there still room for improvement?

Your efforts have tripled the PPD! Thank you for your patience!

I can't recreate this error message you're receiving. I downloaded Player 3 and it performs the same as Workstation. You should be getting over 2000ppd with a T9400 with tear's fix installed.

Fussy is right about not running a cpu client and the vm smp client at the same time. That will just complicate things.
The only difference between your laptop and mine is that I'm running XP pro and you are running Vista. As long as you have VT turned on in your bios it should run the 64 bit notfreds.

However, I'm confused about the sequence of events. If you're getting this error saying that it only support 64 bit clients, how are you getting past that to start folding,,, or , is it just an informational message? Or do you only get this when you killall fah6 and restart it?