On 28 Feb 2005 11:07:14 -0800, linus_das@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

I started a new job about 2 weeks ago.  Last Friday I asked whether it
would be acceptable to run SETI@Home on their computers.  They said OK.
Today I installed S@H on 2 PCs(Dell P4 1.8 GHz / 256 MB RAM / Win XP
Pro).  Because these machines have no network connection, I used
SETIStash to cache WUs on the Classic CLI.  This is theway I ran
Classic on my Windows 2000 box for the past 5years.  Throughout the day
I received reports that the PCswere acting slowly, and I was asked to
help sort out one ofthem that was not printing.  At the end of the day,
I tried tolog-out the other machine, only to find it hung and had tobe
reset.

Normally these machines work very reliably, so surely S@Hmust have been
the cause.  I find that amazing, as I'veused SETIStash + Classic CLI on
my own Windows 2000 box for the past 5 years with no issues whatsoever
- I can'ttell the difference whether S@H is running or not.  Whatwent
wrong on these Win XP Pro boxes?  Were they short on memory (my home
box is 576 MB vs 256 MB for these) or was it some kind of resource
conflict?

Could the work machines be Celerons? That would cause a big slowdown
in an already slow machine. Could also be that you installed the
screen saver version instead of the CLI version of the program. The
screen saver version is not as responsive to user input. Meaning it
doesn't ratchet back as fast  when needed to as the CLI version.