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Uninstalling Folding@home FAQ

Table of Contents

What is Folding@home?

Folding@home (FAH) is an example of a distributed supercomputer, like SETI@home, Muon1, Clean Energy Project (WCG), Distributed.net, and many others. Distributed computing allows individuals to donate their computer time to build supercomputers 100 to 1000x greater than by traditional means.

How does Folding@home work?

From the point of view of the computer, Folding@home acts exactly like a web browser. It downloads files from the internet (with security checksums to ensure that they came from the official site). Indeed, it uses only port 80 (or 8080 if available) and talks to the servers via HTML, just like a web browser. From here, FAH is different: it performs it's scientific calculation and then resends the data back. If you are running Folding@home, you will see network traffic on port 8080 or 80. Only idle CPU time will be used by the client.

Can I run Folding@home on a machine I don't own?

One is only legally permitted to install Folding@home on machines one either owns or on which one has the permission of the owner to run the Folding@home software. Any other use of FAH violates our license agreement.

What does Folding@home do about illegal installations?

We have taken swift action against illegal installations (such as Jethroted and Dales Kid) and are prepared for immediate action in case of other similar infractions. See below for 3rd party uninstallers.

We have remotely terminated any further calculations for these clients so they will no longer use any significant CPU time or bandwidth. In addition, these accounts have been zeroed, no more points will be added, and investigations are on going. One cannot stop someone from installing software in an illegal fashion, but we can and have removed all incentives to do so and are investigating additional prosecution of the offenders.

Has this ever happened to other distributed computing projects?

Yes. SETI@home has lead the way in many areas of distributed computing, including illegal installations.

How do I uninstall Folding@home?

For the Windows GUI version of FAH, if the client was installed using the official installer, there will be an "Uninstall" option available in the Folding@home tab under the start menu. This will completely uninstall the software.

For the console version of the software, you should be able to search for the FAH binary (called Folding@home-Win32-x86.exe, etc.) and delete the Folding@home program.

What if the suggestions above do not work?

In this case, you have an unofficial installation of Folding@home violating our license agreement. Someone has gained access to your machine and decided to run Folding@home. Hackers hack machines to run tasks they are interested in running (eg web servers, ftp sites, etc) and can make life very difficult for users to remove this hacked software. If your computer has been hacked, please contact your ISP security officials to report this illegal action.

Isn't there some way to automatically delete Folding@home when it's been installed without the owner's permission?

If our client has been installed on a machine you own, without your authorization, Stanford University had nothing to do with the installation. We will aid the authorities in taking strong action against any hacker that does this without your knowledge or permission.

Unfortunately, unauthorized installations intentionally make it difficult to uninstall software and install in new and different ways every day. Thus, there is no way to automatically account for this, just as one must update virus filters frequently for each new virus. The best defense to any hacking is strong computer security.

However, here are some suggestions for thwarting those who have tried to obscure a Folding@home installation:

1. Use your OS's file search utilities to look for files with filenames like "FAHlog.txt" or "FAHCore_*.exe".
2. If you find these files, look for executables in the same directory that look unusual and delete them

While this is a cumbersome process, this will remove the files involved and thus stop Folding@home from running.

What can I do to improve my computer security?

The first step for computer security is to consider anyone who might have used your machine. Most installations are done by someone with physical access to your machine. We strongly suggest that you use a firewall (such as Zone Alarm's free firewall for Windows PCs) and anti-virus software. Also, it is important to keep your machine patched to the latest OS version (especially for Windows machines).

I am very familiar with Windows. Can you give me more specific, technical information on how to remove Folding@home?

There are basically three things to remove, assuming there isn't some underlying virus which will try to rebuild them:

1. Executable and work files. Use Windows Explorer to look for a directory containing files beginning FAH or Fah. Other files in that directory might be WinFAH, MyFolding, client, queue, and unitinfo. There should also be a subdirectory named work containing files with names beginning wudata, wuinfo, wuresults, logfile, current, and core78. Any such files can be deleted, and if deleting them all leaves a directory substantially empty, that is, with nothing remaining which looks useful, then those remaining files and the directory itself should be deleted too.
2. Scheduling and startup files. Remove shortcuts in any startup folders or desktops which refer to files deleted in step 1.
3. System information. Use regedit to remove the PandeGroup keys in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Software group.

This might fail to remove the main executable file if its name has been changed to make it hard to find, but most likely it will be in the same directory as the other files. This procedure also might still leave behind a few icons and other display information, and potentially some third-party software, but it should substantially eliminate the Folding@home client from the machine. Thanks to Richard Howell for the part of the FAQ.

Where can I learn more?

For Mac OS-X, there is a third party removal tool as well, located at the bottom of the this page. Stanford University does not provide any warranty for this removal tool. If you need further information, please visit foldingforum.org.

For More Information, Please See:

• FAH FAQ
• Folding Support Forum
• Folding@home on Wikipedia

Last Updated on May 30, 2012, at 10:27 PM