I am running a service install of BOINC 7.6.15 (Win7 64-bit), and have been seeing the error "couldn't start app: CreateProcess() failed - A required privilege is not held by the client. (0x522)". This has occurred on six of the last fifteen jobs that I have completed, and each shows 0 seconds CPU run time.

Is this due to the service install of BOINC? I have not seen it on other machines where I do not install BOINC as a service.

You may be able to remedy this by changing which account the service runs under in services.msc

See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755249.aspx for more info.

^ specifically talking about Step 5 (maybe start there and read backwards to get context)

If this machine has multiple accounts on it, it's possible that the service is running under an account with less privileges than required (ie. unable to do something such as 'Create Process'). By default, most services run as 'Local System' or 'Local Service' - but it may need to run as your own windows profile to actually work.

Thanks. When you install BOINC as a service, it sets it up to run under a "boinc_master" account. So I switched it over to my own account. At least it didn't complain about anything and is running the work units that were already in progress OK. So I will see how it goes with the future work units. That could be a useful trick to know for other purposes too.

Thanks. When you install BOINC as a service, it sets it up to run under a "boinc_master" account. So I switched it over to my own account. At least it didn't complain about anything and is running the work units that were already in progress OK. So I will see how it goes with the future work units. That could be a useful trick to know for other purposes too.

Nice to hear.

A couple of notes;
1) an alternative fix might be to add the boinc_master account to the administrators group (right click Computer, goto 'Manage' and go to groups) though I'm not sure if this would fix it, and this could also arguably be a bad security practice
2) The switching of the service might require a restart before it actually makes any difference (because.. Windows), maybe not though, I'm just guessing.

I've never installed BOINC as a service, but its interesting to troubleshoot in proxy.

Good point; being Windows, a reboot never hurts. It has downloaded one more WU without incident, but I have set it for the 24-hour work units, so it will take a couple of days of new work to prove it.

I have found on those PCs where I do Folding on the GPUs, it helps a little to run BOINC as a service. It seems to avoid an occasional error on one or the other, though it is hard to prove cause and effect. And I do cable video recording on my main PC, and have found that BOINC causes fewer glitches when run as a service. On most CPU projects, a service install does not affect the work units, but occasionally it does (CPDN being a good example of where it often matters).

Thanks again, and I will post back in a few days.

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The last fifteen jobs have all started up without the error noted above (verses six of the first fifteen that errored out after 0 seconds because of it). Therefore, it appears that the problem has been fixed with the change to the service account recommended by Timo.

I am trying it on CPDN now, to see if it fixes a similar problem there, but there has been no work recently to test it.

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