At this point BOINC should be installed and running on your computer; the system tray should have an icon like this: If not, get help here.

What happens now?

BOINC, running in the background, will download computing jobs, process them, and upload the results. This will happen automatically; you don't have to do anything. This computation may cause your computer's fan to run, and it may slightly increase your electric bill.

How to monitor and control BOINC

You can monitor what BOINC is doing, and control it, using the BOINC Manager. Open this by double-clicking on the BOINC icon. Details are here.

Computing preferences

BOINC is designed to not impact the performance of your computer for normal use. If it does, you can reduce this impact by, for example, limiting the amount of memory BOINC uses. You can control many settings. Check this out here.

Community

You can meet and communicate with other MilkyWay@home participants in a variety of ways - take a look under the Community menu above.

Other projects

MilkyWay@home is one of many science projects using BOINC. Your computer is now 'attached' to MilkyWay@home, but you can attach it to other projects if you want. It will process jobs for all attached projects. Learn about how to do this.

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