I just downloaded the latest version of BOINC, 7.4.27 for Windows 64-bit.

When trying to Add Project and select World Community Grid, enter my username and password I get this error:

Failed to add project
Messages from server:
missing or bad parameter: email_addr

Workaround

This seems to be a regression bug from way back. For some reason the World Community Grid forum does not rank high in Google search results but in this thread I found the following workaround to add project from command line instead of GUI.

Do this:

1. Login to worldcommunitygrid.org then click Settings and My Profile, at the bottom of that page you will find your Account key
2. Have BOINC running
3. Open a Windows Command Prompt and go to the BOINC program directory, for 64-bit this should be something like c:\Program Files\BOINC, for 32-bit c:\Program Files (x86)\BOINC
4. Enter command:

   boinccmd.exe --project_attach www.worldcommunitygrid.org [Insert your Account key here]

5. That’s it, World Community Grid should now be added as a project in BOINC

Just wanted to share this, probably old news to most of you out there, but: SSD actually does work!

I just installed an SSD (Solid State Drive) in my four year old (!) laptop and it is now lightning fast!

My laptop is an Acer Aspire 5741G with 4GB memory running Windows 7 64-bit. I switched the original 320GB HDD for a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD.

Simple setup

Included with the SSD drive is a piece of software called Samsung Data Migration. You also need a SATA to USB cable, you can select to buy the SSD with this cable included if you don’t already own one.

The Data Migration tool was a breeze, I just ran it and my existing hard drive including Windows and everything else on it was copied to the new SSD drive. I then turned off my laptop and switched drives and everything – totally unexpected – just worked!

The only thing I had to do was delete and move some files since I was going from an almost full 320GB drive to 250GB. Also the SSD drive needs to have 20% free of the new drives available ca 230GB so that took me down to below 200GB.

After setup I ran the Samsung Magician software that is also included. There you can test performance and do optimizations. I have yet to figure out the various settings but enabling something called Rapid mode gave my benchmark tests a real boost.

Magician also reports that my laptop does not support SATA 3 (6Gb/s) hence not being able to use maximum performance of the SSD drive but that actually does not bother me as it is anyway superfast!

Some more info on SSD and Samsung software can be found here.

Conclusion: If you, like I did, don’t think SSD will do that much for your laptop (or desktop for that matter) – think again!