"Sarah" <a@b.c> wrote in message 
news:434fbaae$0$10888$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...

In WinXP Sp2 I've tried setting the Base Priority for SETI to Normal. The 
result that I'm expecting is faster crunching times. Everytime I restart 
the Base Priority defaults to Low. boincmgr remains at Normal. Is there 
any way to set it permanently to Normal or any other priority that I want 
to?

leave it at defaults
boinc.exe and manager is supposed to run at normal
the seti application is supposed to run at low

setting it from low to normal will slightly lower the time taken to process, 
but your pc will appear to be sluggish

low means most programs running higher get cpu time as they want it, and set 
gets what is leftover, this means all idle cpu time is used by seti, so 
doesn't effect your normal pc running speed at all
(unless your computer is well underpowered or well overloaded, same thing 
really)