Folding Forum

I am using version 7.5.1 on Windows 10 and I am having a problem. I do not leave my computer on all the time, and usually the F@H software will continue from the last saved point when I restart. However, one day I restarted and the progress was gone. I was up to about 75-80% done, and was back to the start again. The next time I made sure that I had paused the software before shutting down. Now after 2 days of not having the computer on I have booted up to discover I have lost progress again, this time at almost 50%.

Why is this happening? Does this mean that the work units have been solved?

Any advice will be helpful.

First, check to see if you are comparing progress on the same WU, the Project, Run, Clone and Generation numbers all have to be the same.

Next, how are you shutting down the computer? The CPU folding core can take a minute to finish exiting and leave valid checkpoints to start up. A GPU WU writes out its checkpoints at specific intervals of progress, typically every 2-5%.

What I can suggest is that when you are preparing to shut your computer down, first pause folding and then shut down after 30-60 seconds. And if you are one of those who shutdown by pressing the power button, use Windows shutdown instead.

My guess is that your WUs are Expiring whilst you have your machine switched off and are being dumped … Some on the Projects have quite short expiry dates and if you machine has been turned of for a couple of days this could well have happened … If you post your logs viewtopic.php?f=24&t=26036 then it might be possible to confirm this.

All Project WUs https://apps.foldingathome.org/psummary have two "deadlines" the first is the Timeout at which point a WU will be reissued, the second is the Deadline after which time the WU will not be accepted for return ... I believe (but could be wrong) that at this point the client dumps the WU.

You say you didn't have the pc on for 2 days. If you look at the FAH Control, the WU details show you a Timeout and Expiration date & time. As far as I understand, if the WU isn't completed and the result uploaded by Timeout, the work servers put the WU back in the queue to be sent out again to another client.
If that client reports that WU completed and valid before yours, I think your client aborts that WU and downloads the next one. Even though the Expiration date is often 5 to 8 days, the Timeout date is often only 24 or 36 hours. Many WUs can be completed in a matter of a few hours and therefore it's easy to miss the Timeout date and have someone else complete the WU within 2 days.
I have seen a few times on my laptop GPU, which is very slow and takes about 4 to 5 days to crunch through one WU, that after 2 or 3 days all of a sudden a new WU had started.

HugoNotte wrote:If that client reports that WU completed and valid before yours, I think your client aborts that WU and downloads the next one. Even though the Expiration date is often 5 to 8 days, the Timeout date is often only 24 or 36 hours. Many WUs can be completed in a matter of a few hours and therefore it's easy to miss the Timeout date and have someone else complete the WU within 2 days.
I have seen a few times on my laptop GPU, which is very slow and takes about 4 to 5 days to crunch through one WU, that after 2 or 3 days all of a sudden a new WU had started.

Pretty sure that if you complete/upload after the timeout but before the expiry date it will be valid and accepted irrespective of whether anyone else has completed it - not aborted/dumped !! … which only happens at the deadline or expiry date. There are however some project with short expiry dates (shortest looks like 2 days with a number also between 3 and 5 days).

Happy to be corrected on this.

HugoNotte wrote:...If that client reports that WU completed and valid before yours, I think your client aborts that WU and downloads the next one. Even though the Expiration date is often 5 to 8 days, the Timeout date is often only 24 or 36 hours...

Please note that the only time the client will delete a WU is when the Expiration time has been reached. Apart from that, it will not delete a WU (even if it is after the Timeout period and before the Expiration date and it was reassigned to another Donor and successfully returned)