I was recently installing BOINC client on various devices I had around in my home. My three small computers - Raspberry pi, Odroid, Rock64 - got new missions. I was also successful with my old android phone (despite its dead battery and Kit Kat) and an old Nook tablet. I'm so happy and proud to see them doing 24/7 computations for science! They may be slow, but in the end, they do their job :)

I was a bit unsure if enabling BOINC on my PC and laptop will be fine or rather annoying, as I and my family use those computers every day. But finally, I decided to give it a try too.

Running BOINC on Windows: two modes.

When you install BOINC on Windows, the installer gives you two options: to install the client as a standalone app or as a system service. The biggest advantage of running BOINC as a service is increased security and it can work for all users using that computer, completely in the background. Unfortunately, with such a setup BOINC won't use your graphics card :( GPU can be used only in a standalone mode.

I was torn between those two options. Using GPU means better scores when crunching, but because I share that PC with my family the overall results will be not that good, as they will probably forget about starting BOINC.

I was looking for an easy way to switch between running BOINC as a service and a standalone client with GPU enabled. The internet says it's not possible without reinstalling the client each time. But guess what - that's not true :)

How to switch between BOINC Windows service and GPU-enabled mode?

You can temporarily switch off the BOINC service and run the client from your regular user account. It is possible, because BOINC service uses the same executable (just running it on another user account and with an extra "-d" parameter - you can find it in the Registry if you're curious).

In my case - I leave BOINC service running when I don't use my PC, so it is working on the projects whenever someone from my family is using the machine. And I manually switch to GPU-enabled client when I work or browse the Internet.

1. Open the Services panel, find BOINC, and change "Startup type" to "Manual", then stop the service.
   • If you're running BOINC manager you will notice all running tasks and projects will disappear (no worries, it's fine - they are just not running anymore, but still on your disk)
2. Open your BOINC installation folder, and click on BOINC.exe
   • BOINC will start in the terminal window (black window) and will display what it's currently doing. Now you can connect to it with BOINC manager, as usual.
   • If you want to stop the client - CTRL+C in the terminal window will do the magic.
3. If you want to switch back to running BOINC as a service - terminate the client (CTRL+C in the terminal window), open the Services panel, click on BOINC service, and change the startup type back to "Auto". Then click on "Run".

That's all. The process requires a few steps but is quite easy, and much quicker than reinstalling the client. And most importantly - all BOINC settings and project data are untouched. Happy BOINCing! :)