New here so I'm not sure how things are supposed to run. I have 8 tasks that show a 20+ hour completion times that were running at high priority. They were all stopped so some shorter tasks that were downloaded later could run. The short tasks complete and then more are downloaded and start running leaving the longer tasks in "waiting to run" mode. The long tasks are due by 1/5 but they'll never finish if the short keep delaying them. I'm going to suspend the short ones to get the long ones going again but is there something I can do to keep this from happening?

One method is to change your project preferences to not run the short tasks.

One thing I do in circumstances like this is to use app_config.xml to restrict how many short tasks can run at one time, thereby ensuring that a set number of processors remain to crunch the longer tasks.

Another method is to reduce your minimum work buffer to below the deadline of the short running tasks, so e.g. 0.1 days.

With the app_config.xml you depend on a constant flow of the long running type of tasks.
If no long runnings are coming anymore, you have maxed out the number of short running tasks and will have idle cores when no other BOINC projects active.

Thanks for the suggestions. Was hoping to not have to micro-manage.