Folding Forum

After installing the basic 6.23 systray program from the main page, I noticed it did not add itself to the list of programs that start automatically every time the computer reboots. This is not a big problem for me since I know how to add things to the startup folder manually, but I'm wondering if this is a problem for anyone else? When you first installed, did the program start automatically for you without any further effort? If not, this is something I strongly suggest the developers look into fixing. There are probably a lot of computer novices out there who downloaded the standard FAH program from the main page and stopped using it due to the hassle of manually starting it every time they turn on their computer. A lot more numbers would be crunched if it worked automatically as a screen saver or background process, rather than needing to be turned on manually each time.

Welcome to the F@H Forum bdwilson,

The screensaver option was removed from the latest versions as it used resources that could be spend folding. Regarding the automatic start-up, have you looked into the Services option? You would have to use the Console Client to achieve that.

Regarding the useability, we have V7 in Open Public Beta and it is designed from the ground up with user-friendlessness in mind. It has a completely new GUI and lots of easy-to-understand feature layout.

Thanks, I got it working fine. My post was really a suggestion to the developers to make every version of folding@home automatically start upon system reboots. The version I downloaded is probably the most popular download, and unfortunately it doesn't do this. I'm assuming a certain portion of the population who downloads it isn't going to go through the trouble of manually starting the program every time they reboot, and it's a shame that all of that processing power is going to waste. It could be fixed if every version of F@H would place itself in the startup folder automatically during the install process.

I don't disagree with your suggestion, but there's really no maintenance being done on V6. All the resources are going into developing V7 and I think you'll be pleased with the way it installs itself.

bruce wrote:I don't disagree with your suggestion, but there's really no maintenance being done on V6. All the resources are going into developing V7 and I think you'll be pleased with the way it installs itself.

I totally understand, and I am pleased with the beta. But it wouldn't take much work at all to simply add a line of code to v6 to make it autostart. Why not ask a developer to spend 2 minutes on it? I don't know how many downloads you get every month of V6, but I'm sure a certain chunk of those drop off after a few days. This could be fixed by simply making a tiny change and updating the file.

Any time the code is touched, even for something that looks like it would be simple (it is not), the testing and quality assurance process has to be followed. They do internal testing on multiple machines, and on multiple OS versions, and on multiple projects. Then the beta testers run it for a while. A few weeks later, if nothing else got broken, it can finally get published on the download page.

It's not a 2 minute fix as you suggest.