Salad shows "Finding Job" for hours
What "Finding Job" means, how long it can normally last, how to tell low demand from a problem on your PC, and what to check before contacting support.
What it means: "Finding Job" is the app waiting for the network to assign a container job and downloading it when one arrives. It appears between every two jobs, and jobs are often short: customers start and stop workloads through the day, so a machine can cycle through many jobs with short waits in between. That's normal and you're paid for every minute a job runs.
How long is normal? A few minutes to a few hours between jobs is typical. Wait times may lengthen when demand for your GPU dips. Many hours or days with nothing - on a GPU the Network Monitor shows as in demand - is worth checking.
First, check whether it's really idle
Open your Earnings Summary. If balance was credited in the last hour, the machine is running a job and the app's display is behind or its metrics are being altered by conflicting states.
What to check, in order
Degraded notifications
Open the bell icon. Any Degraded notification means a check is failing and no container jobs are offered until it's fixed. Follow the guide for it under Degraded State.
Demand for your GPU
On the Network Monitor, find your exact card. Low or moderate demand means longer waits; the machine is likely fine and hasn't been selected for a workload yet. Set up a demand alert and leave Salad running - restarting it does not move you up the queue and can hurt your chances.
The first job after a fresh install
A new install (or reinstall) must complete a short compatibility check and installation process - a download of roughly 60 MB that has to finish once - before paid jobs are offered. On a slow or filtered connection that alone can take a long time; see Downloads slow or failing.
The basics
Both GPU and CPU enabled under Settings > Configure Hardware; at least 70 GB free on C:; virtualization on; no VPN or proxy; nothing else using the GPU; the PC not asleep (see Disable sleep mode). The full list is on Not getting container jobs.
Your connection
Salad runs a speed test at startup and the network uses it when assigning jobs. If the test ran while your connection was still coming back after an outage or a router reboot, the reading sticks until the check is run.
You can review the measured speeds in C:\ProgramData\Salad\logs\ndm, within the latest log file. If speeds are lower
than
our minimum speeds,
restart the test by exiting Salad, and restarting the Salad.Bowl.Service process in Task Manager or by restarting your
machine.
Please don't reinstall to get jobs
Reinstalling, unregistering the WSL environment or clearing Salad's folders resets the compatibility check and the image cache, so the next jobs start from zero downloads. It doesn't change what the network offers you.
Still nothing after a day?
Send Salad Support your machine ID, the time the wait started with your time zone, and your logs folder zipped (how to find it). We can see whether the network offered your machine jobs that didn't start, or simply had none for your hardware.
Last updated on
Not Earning
Start here when Salad shows Finding Job for a long time, earnings dropped, a job runs but pays nothing, or jobs keep restarting.
Why am I not receiving any jobs?
The two reasons a machine gets no jobs - low demand for its hardware, or a configuration that stops it qualifying - and how to check each.