Re: Set folding to run at specific hours/days
Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2025 8:37 pm
Since OP is on Windows, I figured I'd share my experience, since I did this on Windows myself last year. I need F@H to pause on weekdays between 6am and 9am and again between 6pm and 9pm, when my power price spikes from 8c/kWh to 28c/kWh.
I went the lufah.exe route and created 3 tasks in Windows task manager:
Name: FoldingAtHome-Finish
Triggers: Weekly at 5:30am Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri, Weekly at 5:30pm Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri
Actions: Start a program, script: c:\users\[username]\.local\bin\lufah.exe, arguments: finish
Name: FoldingAtHome-Pause
Triggers: Weekly at 6:00am Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri, Weekly at 6:00pm Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri
Actions: Start a program, script: c:\users\[username]\.local\bin\lufah.exe, arguments: pause
Name: FoldingAtHome-Unpause
Triggers: Weekly at 9:00am Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri, Weekly at 9:00pm Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri
Actions: Start a program, script: c:\users\[username]\.local\bin\lufah.exe, arguments: fold
The first task (FInish) avoids downloading a new WU if the task finishes in the last 30 minutes before the pause session--for my rig and my 3-hour pause window, that seems to be a rough break-even point where the extra 3-hour delay in returning a completed WU reduces the Quick Return Bonus outweighs losing that 30 minutes of extra folding time. YMMV there.
@calxalot did a light overview of how to get lufah.exe installed via WSL. For more details, there are guides online for how to do that, and (even easier) LLMs like ChatGPT are very useful for stuff like this if you're not experienced. I did not create any XML task definitions--I simply pass raw commands to lufah.exe from the Windows Task Scheduler and that seems to work fine for me.
I went the lufah.exe route and created 3 tasks in Windows task manager:
Name: FoldingAtHome-Finish
Triggers: Weekly at 5:30am Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri, Weekly at 5:30pm Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri
Actions: Start a program, script: c:\users\[username]\.local\bin\lufah.exe, arguments: finish
Name: FoldingAtHome-Pause
Triggers: Weekly at 6:00am Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri, Weekly at 6:00pm Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri
Actions: Start a program, script: c:\users\[username]\.local\bin\lufah.exe, arguments: pause
Name: FoldingAtHome-Unpause
Triggers: Weekly at 9:00am Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri, Weekly at 9:00pm Mon/Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri
Actions: Start a program, script: c:\users\[username]\.local\bin\lufah.exe, arguments: fold
The first task (FInish) avoids downloading a new WU if the task finishes in the last 30 minutes before the pause session--for my rig and my 3-hour pause window, that seems to be a rough break-even point where the extra 3-hour delay in returning a completed WU reduces the Quick Return Bonus outweighs losing that 30 minutes of extra folding time. YMMV there.
@calxalot did a light overview of how to get lufah.exe installed via WSL. For more details, there are guides online for how to do that, and (even easier) LLMs like ChatGPT are very useful for stuff like this if you're not experienced. I did not create any XML task definitions--I simply pass raw commands to lufah.exe from the Windows Task Scheduler and that seems to work fine for me.