Bitcoin Forum

I'm hoping this is the right forum for this.

I've seen there is a bitcoin pool being run by xkcd fans (and possibly creator).  I'd like to join this pool, versus mining solo or any other pool. I've visited their page, signed up on the page.  I've set GUIminer as suggested in the getting started section.  but I'm getting an error "problem communicating with bitcoin rpc" when trying to connect.

I have Windows 7 64 bit.  I use GUIminer v2011-07-01, Bitcoin 0.3.24.  Bitcoin and GUIminer have both been added as exceptions for my firewall (Windows firewall) and the ports required have been opened up in my router.  My bitcoin.conf file has my user name and password set and the ip address tag set to all.

Any help would be appreciated.  I've looked up my issue on google, but found mostly unhelpful posts with a similar connection issue and no resolution unless I wanted to solo mine.

First question: Does it work when mining for another pool?

Try #xkcd-bitcoin channel on the IRC server irc.foonetic.net ?

Also, I will put the question here http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinmining since I see you are a Newbie and can't go the Mining sections of these forums yet.

I spotted this from r/BitcoinMining - thanks BP.

You most likely have to register a "worker" with the pool you are mining for.

After you sign up, you then need to register a "worker" which will be the username you use to connect to the mining pool.

Confusing, I know :P

I'm a registered worker for the pool, I get the same issue when selecting other pools, but I can solo mine just fine.