I was having quite a few problems with my laptop running Windows 8 x64 and the latest stable release of BOINC (7.064)

The most notable problem was with the laptop not being able to shutdown or sleep properly after running BOINC. I just installed 7.1.1 and it not only goes to sleep right away when i ask it to, but the computer seems to be running much better in general when BOINC is crunching. If you are having similar issues, or if you are running Windows 8 I recommend trying 7.1.1