Christopher P. Winter wrote:

"Rob Bradford" <rob.bradford@lvirgin.net> wrote:

Hi.

I runn the old style SETI screensaver on three machines (2 XP, 1 W2000 pro) all three of them have now satlled with the message "can't open file".  A reboot sometimes works, but not now all three have stalled!  What file can't it open?  Not a very helpful message.

Any ideas?

Rob,

    I've encountered this twice now. Never saw it before this week (but I'm
new to SaH, having begun just this January.)

    I discovered that if I delete or rename the file "outfile.sah" I can then
download a new work unit and proceed.

    This tells me nothing about the cause of the problem. It does seem as if
corrupt data is the likely cause, but that's just speculation.

My classic command line machines will periodically refuse to download a new work unit, the error is coming from the Seti@home servers inability to answer the request for one... Once they get back online, everything works fine again with no changes on my end...