Hello,

I have been using BOINC for almost 10 years now on a variety of projects.
Currently, BOINC runs on a Windows 10 system with Intel CPU and GPU. The system is almost clean, just a few programs installed. No additional firewall or antivirus besides Windows Defender.

The problem is: the latest version of BOINC that runs on my system is 7.4.42. I tried most newer versions since then, and they just don't work. Let me describe a typical new update installation scenario, done just a few minutes ago with boinc_7.14.2_windows_x86_64.

Install new version: everything goes smoothly, no error messages whatsoever. I did not install as a service.
Launch 1st time: asks me to add project, but nothing shows up. The window is empty, no projects, nothing. I close the new project window.
Select "Use account manager": nothing happens
Select "Computing preferences": nothing happens
Status bar in the lower right reports "Disconnected" all the time
Event log is always empty
After trying things a few times "The BOINC client has exited unexpectedly 3 times within the last 2 minutes"
Tried all the above with firewall turned off, no change. Added firewall rules, no change.
Restarted the computer, no change.
Uninstall latest version, reinstall boinc_7.4.42_windows_x86_64: everything works fine, back to normality.

Any suggestions?

Status bar in the lower right reports "Disconnected" all the time

Big clue there.
BOINC is in 2 parts - the client, which does the work but is hidden, and the manager (gui), which is a window that let's you look into the room with the client in it to see what it's up to.
If they're not connected, you can't see what's going on.

Your projects may all be gathered around playing poker and drinking whisky, for all you can tell. :)

So the thing that you have to do is find out WHY good old Windows is blocking the port that connects them. Which has a default value of Pi - 31416

My best guess is that the 7.4.42 installation has left behind it's client which is still running or possibly there is a registry entry that hasn't been cleaned up that is getting in the way. Might be worth checking out this thread.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=12737

I've now uninstalled it again and deleted all the BOINC folders. This time, I've searched the registry for boinc and "space sciences" and deleted every key and entry that contains those.

On reinstalling, it asked me to connect to a project (seti@home) and log in. It works! No idea why it happened, but I'll leave it at that.

I believe I tried cleaning everything once, but I probably didn't go all the way through with the registry and some folders scattered around. Will do that in the next few days and report back.

Thanks for all the help so far!

Hello I have nearly an identical problem as Steve (also my name BTW),

Here is a copy of the event from my Event Viewer > Application:

Faulting application name: boinc.exe, version: 7.14.2.0, time stamp: 0x5bbe9f91
Faulting module name: LIBEAY32.dll, version: 1.0.2.7, time stamp: 0x56d5fc8e
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000e6543
Faulting process id: 0x1318
Faulting application start time: 0x01d49d91c62cc02f
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\BOINC\boinc.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\BOINC\LIBEAY32.dll
Report Id: e2f6ac70-b67f-4255-96b8-6b141bdfbbef
Faulting package full name:

Is there a way to just replace the LIBEAY32.dll ? do you think it's corrupted? I did an uninstall, and cleanup of the registry, and reinstalled, but nothing helps.
Even using the Select Computer > Localhost tries to connect, but nothing after.

Can you enable the file_xfer_debug and http_debug log flags in Event Log Options (CTRL+SHIFT+F), crash the client once more and post the resulting logs (last 30-40 lines from stdoutdae.txt in the BOINC data directory)?

---