The UDShutdowner page

Shutdown utility of the grid.org distributed computing programme

Grid.org (formerly United Devices) is a distributed computing company. It's most well-known project is the cancer project, which was conduced in co-operation with the University of Oxford.
Unfortunately, there is a... well flaw is too harsh a word... an imperfection in the grid.org programme. The grid.org programme, which I will refer to a 'the agent', only saves the processed data every once in a while, at so-called checkpoints. These checkpoints can be seconds apart, but also hours. In the early days, days between checkpoints were also reported. Now when you shut down, the data generated since the last checkpoint is lost. If you don't care about some lost CPU cycles, then this programme is not for you.

The UDShutdowner is a windows programme that runs in the taskbar and does absolutely nothing until the computer is shut down. This shutdown can be initiated by clicking "Start->Shut Down" or another programme. Next, it halts the shutdown procedure and starts monitoring the grid.org agent. When a new checkpoint is reached, the shutdown is (re-)initiated and the computer is shut down. If you have a computer with ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), and most computers do nowadays, it will switch itself off automagically. Beleive me: once you have this set up, you don't have to worry about anything else.
I've tried to make the memory fingerprint for this programme as small as possible, while retaining the ease of use. Most of the initial values I've programmed into the UDShutdowner should be sufficient. Please read the readme.

Download:
UDShutdowner version 0.4 (301 kb)
Installation instructions: Unzip the zip file and read the readme file (web version)

Screenshots: Configuration screen (38kb)
Waiting for the grid.org agent to finish (14kb)
UDShutdowner icon in system tray (3 kb)
No need for any other screenshots - That's all of them!

Note: This programme is not uniquely tuned to the gird.org agent! You can set this programme to monitor any file which is about to be changed, try it out!

P.S. If you ant to read my thesis, go