How to run Prime95 as service in Win7?

[Matt]

I've spent the better part of an hour trying to get Prime95 working as a service on my new Windows 7 computer and I can't figure it out. Is there any documentation on how to set this up? I see a "Start a Login" option but no "Start at Bootup" option like I had under XP. I did find a service download but it has no documentation, not even a readme, and does nothing when I run it. I'm assuming that it's broken and/or abandoned.

I'd appreciate some guidance if one of you have done this before.

Using P95 v25.11, build 2.

[NBtarheel_33]

This works on XP, as well. I believe you have to have administrator rights, however, in order to execute these commands.

First thing is to download Prime95.exe (32- or 64-bit, as appropriate) to whatever location you would like (a good choice would be into a folder such as C:\Prime95)

Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories and right click on "Command Prompt". When you right click, you'll get a menu of options - click on "Run as Administrator".

Agree to the User Account Control warning/dialog box.

The command prompt window will open up. At the prompt, type (note the space after the binPath=):

sc create Prime95 binPath= c:\prime95\prime95.exe

(substitute your own Windows file path name if you stored the exe file somewhere other than C:\Prime95)

and hit enter. If all goes well, you'll simply see a new command prompt...and you'll have a new service called Prime95 that runs prime95.exe.

Now, click the start button, and in the search box, type services.msc and hit enter. This will bring up a list of services (listed in alphabetical order) on your system. Scroll down to the Prime95 service, right-click it and choose Properties.

On the Properties page, the General tab should be highlighted. (If it isn't, then select it.) Be sure that the Startup type is Automatic (this will start the service on bootup, regardless of whether or not a user is logged on).

Now click the "Log On" tab (still on the Properties page). Check the button for "Local System Account". This ensures that Prime95 will run even if no one is logged on, and will also run for any user who *is* logged on.

Finally, the "Recovery" tab on the Properties page gives you some options for what Windows should do if anything should ever stop or interrupt the Prime95 service. You might wish to ensure that the recovery options are set up so that the service always tries to restart itself if there are any errors, failures, or interruptions.

Now close the Properties page, and right-click the Prime95 service, choosing "Start". Voila! Prime95 is up and running, and will always be up and running as long as your system is, or until you stop the service.

Unfortunately, due to the new security "features" in Vista and 7, you cannot interact with the Prime95 GUI when you have it running as a service. If you wish to interact with the GUI to change options, release work, etc., first stop the Prime95 service. Then navigate to your Prime95 folder, and open the program the old-fashioned way. Make whatever changes you wish to make, and then stop and exit the GUI. Now go to services.msc and restart your service, and you're done. If, on the other hand, you're well-enough versed in the language of the Prime95 configuration files (prime.txt, worktodo.txt, local.txt, etc.), you can make changes to the settings directly in those files, then stop and restart your Prime95 service. A similar procedure applies to upgrading Prime95. You need simply stop the service, overwrite the old Prime95.exe with the new version, and then restart the service.

Finally, should you ever want to remove the Prime95 service, simply open a Command Prompt as an Administrator, and type

sc delete Prime95

hit enter, and the service will disappear!

If you're interested in monitoring your progress (as I am), be sure that you have Prime95 set up to write to the results.txt file every 10,000 or 1,000,000 or some other desired number of iterations, as unless you stop the service and open the GUI, this is the only way you will be able to monitor your progress short of waiting for an entire result to be completed and turned in to PrimeNet.

Hope this helps everyone interested in a Prime95 service on Vista or 7. It can be done, it just takes a bit of work to get everything set up. But it certainly helps you be able to "set it and forget it".

[Matt]

Thanks for the instructions. They worked perfectly.

[guido72]

Originally Posted by NBtarheel_33

sc create Prime95 binPath= c:\prime95\prime95.exe

Is it possible to do reliably the same thing with Mfaktc and Misfit? If yes, will the settings of Misfit (i.e. scheduled operations) be mantained?
Regards from Italy
Guido

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by guido72

Is it possible to do reliably the same thing with Mfaktc and Misfit? If yes, will the settings of Misfit (i.e. scheduled operations) be mantained?
Regards from Italy
Guido

Yes, and yes. Actually you don't need to go to so much troubles, if Misfit is configured well, all you have to do is to add Misfit to the startup folder (drag it into start/allprograms/startup on your screen).

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Yes, and yes. Actually you don't need to go to so much troubles, if Misfit is configured well, all you have to do is to add Misfit to the startup folder (drag it into start/allprograms/startup on your screen).

If I'm not mistaken, that Startup folder only applies when someone logs in, not on boot. For the same reason that someone might want to run Prime95 as a service, then, you might want to run Misfit/Mfaktc as a service. Still, good to present both options.

[guido72]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Yes, and yes. Actually you don't need to go to so much troubles, if Misfit is configured well, all you have to do is to add Misfit to the startup folder (drag it into start/allprograms/startup on your screen).

Thank you so much. The goal is to let Mfaktc run as much silently (no windows on the desktop or icons anywhere) and autonomously as possibly. Running Mfaktc as a service is a good way to set its starting, priority and so on and to prevent any eventual crash of the .exe or of the Nvidia driver (sometimes it happens)...

[guido72]

Btw... Is someone thinking about "merging" Mfaktc and Misfit in one single .exe?

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by guido72

Btw... Is someone thinking about "merging" Mfaktc and Misfit in one single .exe?

That would be difficult. Misfit doesn't even run on Linux or the other platforms mfaktc and mfakto run on.

[LaurV]

One can use batch start of Misfit, scheduler, etc., to launch mfaktc, that is what I was thinking when talking about "properly configured" Misfit. Mfaktc can even be on a different folder, or over the network, in many computers, in fact that is what Misfit was done for, with a proper batch you don't need to "manually" launch mfaktc. It does not really make sense to put both in the same exe. But you may try to contact Scott (he most probably doesn't read this thread) and if he sees the utility of it, he will help for sure.

[guido72]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Yes, and yes. Actually you don't need to go to so much troubles, if Misfit is configured well, all you have to do is to add Misfit to the startup folder (drag it into start/allprograms/startup on your screen).

The way you've suggested works properly.
Sice I'm willing to obtain no misfit and mfaktc windows displaying on desktop or any icon in taskbar, I tryed to run both of the above executables as services. Put each istance of Mfaktc in separate folders and one single istance of misfit in another folder managing all mfaktc instances.
Than cmd.exe as Administrator ->sc create mfaktc_01 binPath= wherever\mfaktc-0.20_01.exe, sc create mfaktc_02 binPath= wherever\mfaktc-0.20_02.exe, sc create misfit binPath= wherever\misfit.exe
Services created succesfully. Restart the system (Win7 pro). As I check if everything is working properly (cmd->services.smc) I may see them but they are arrested, even if the startup type is Automatic and the option "Local System Account" is properly set in ,og on Tab. If I try to start the services manually I get the message: Errore 1053: 'il servizio non ha risposto alla richiesta di avvio o controllo in modo tempestivo, which should sound like "Error 1053 : 'The service did not respond in a timely fashion" in English...
What did I do wrong?
Thanks in advance for Help/suggestions!