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This guide will show you step-by-step how to start mining. It assumes you have a desktop computer with a graphics card and you are running Windows.

Mining bitcoins is not likely to be profitable
Despite what you might think or read, the truth is that it is difficult to make a profit from mining bitcoins if you are starting out now. This comes from the fact that so much bitcoin mining equipment has been manufactured and sold that the difficulty will continue to increase at an incredible rate for at least another six months. This rising difficulty has reduced the likely return on any further investment to below zero. You will not make a profit unless you can buy hash rate (including all equipment, cloud hashing, and mining contracts) for less than 0.02 BTC per GH/s and you start mining now (January 2014).

Please keep in mind that when I mention profit, I mean profit in terms of bitcoins, and not your local currency. If you cannot make a profit in bitcoins, then it is better to buy the bitcoins directly rather than to buy the equipment to mine the bitcoins. This is true regardless of what happens to the value of a bitcoin.

Mining alt-coins can be profitable
Currently, it is profitable to mine alt-coins if you have a desktop computer with a graphics card. However, ...

You should not mine using a laptop. The stress on the laptop is high, and replacing the laptop will cost more than you will earn from mining. If you have an Nvidia graphics card or a GPU on the motherboard, then your revenue will be very low and will not be enough to even pay for the electricity. Regardless, it wouldn't hurt to give mining a try even if you have laptop or an incompatible GPU, as a learning experience.

Assuming your computer is already paid for, the costs of mining with a graphics card on a desktop computer come mostly from power costs, though there is some cost due to wear and tear. If you get free electricity, then making a profit from mining is easy. In fact, you can probably make a profit mining bitcoins, but mining alt-coins is currently more profitable.

Step 1. Determine the hash rate and power usage of your graphics card
Find out what kind of graphics card you have. It helps to have as much information as possible about it. Then, find it these lists: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison and https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#AMD_.28ATI.29
You want to find the hash rate (kH/s for litecoin, MH/s for bitcoin) and power usages (watts). Unfortunately, these lists are mostly incomplete. Do your best. The bitcoin list states hash rate in MH/s but don't worry about that yet. Also, the exact numbers are not required because they are only used here to estimate your profitability.

Step 2. Determine your cost of electricity
Look at your power bill. It will tell you how much yoru electricity costs. If you electricity is free, then your cost is 0.

Step 3. Enter you hash rate, power usage, and power cost in the profitability calculator
Go to dustcoin.com (http://dustcoin.com/). Enter your hash rate. Enter the same number for both SHA-256 and scrypt. Make sure that MH/s is selected for SHA-256 and kH/s is selected for scrypt (scrypt is about 1000 times slower than SHA-256). Add 100 watts to your graphics card's power usage and enter that value under Power. Enter your power cost. Select Day for the Period.

Step 4. Determine if you can make a profit from mining
The table will show you approximately how much you will make mining each kind of coin for an entire day. It is likely that mining SHA-256 coins (such as Bitcoin) will show a loss, but mining scrypt coins should show a profit between $0.50 and $4.00, depending on the values you entered. Going forward, I am going to assume that you will be mining scrypt coins.

Step 5. Install mining software
Download cgminer version 3.7.2 from here: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/3.7/. Later versions don't support graphics cards, so get the 3.7.2 version. Unzip the file to a convenient location, such as C:\mining.

Step 6. Set up an account at multipool.us
Go to multipool.us and create an account by clicking on Register.

Step 7. Create a shortcut for convenience
Open Windows Explorer and navigate the folder where cgminer is installed. Right-click on cgminer.exe and select Create Shortcut. Right-click on the shortcut, click on Properties, and add the following to the Target text:
where <user> is your multipool user name. The password can be anything.

My Target looks like this:

You can move this shortcut to your desktop.

Step 8. Start mining
Double-click on the shortcut. A window like this will appear:
https://i.imgur.com/ykczW0v.png
Lines saying "Accepted" should start appearing. If they all say "Rejected" then something is wrong.

Note the hash rate at the top. After a few seconds, it should be somewhere around your expected hash rate. If not, there are several things that might be wrong. I'm not going to troubleshoot the possible problems here, but the most likely fix is to add a -I parameter with a value between 8 and 20. You will have to experiment to get a good balance between hash rate and usability. I use "-I 13" or "-I 19".

You can check your results and profits at the multipool.us website.

Type the Q key to stop mining.

Next steps.
1. Optimize your mining setup. cgminer has many configuration options. Some might improve your hash rate. Do some research.
2. Set up an account on Cryptsy or Bter. You will be mining many different types of coins. If you don't want to keep them all, you can transfer your coins to Cryptsy or Bter and sell the ones you don't want and buy the ones you do.
3. Try other mining software and other pools.
4. Learn about how mining works.
5. Learn how the difficulty and the exchange rate can affect your profitability.
6. Learn how to predict future mining revenue so that you can invest profitably.

Thank you very much for posting this.  Sadly I am running a nvidia laptop so /facepalm.

Will have to experiment when I get time.   Any recommendations on alt coins to hunt for?

I will see how my old ATI HD5570 will do. Thanks for the info...

If you use multipool.us, it will mine the most profitable coin.

Great guide!

There are tons of alternate coins though, which ones are profitable for mining?

Thanks for the guide.  I'm hoping alternate multipools will become available in the months to come.  This is a service that's surprisingly lacking right now.  Especially services that auto convert for you.

Great summary!

Thank you!

its good question I was also going to ask this I have one suggestion from a user that xpm,pxc,ltc and nec are good for mining but I need some information from OP because he give very good information about this already

Nice guide thanks dude!  ;)

Great intro guide for everyone. Thank you for putting this together.

The guide right now seems reasonable. Have a good reading

I enjoyed this guide. Its great for someone wanting to learn alt coins :)

Thx for this guide. Total n00b here  ;D

Thank you for the guide!

Thanks for the guide. Bookmarked it for later.

Definitely a good guide. I've had some luck mining PTS and Litecoins then exchanging them on Cryptsy. Of course I had to invest in a Radeon GPU since my Nvidia card doesn't quite cut it. A shame. My GTX 770 is outperformed by a 3-4 year old Radeon when it comes to mining haha.

Nice step-by-step howto. Love it!!! :) THANKs

Thank you very much for this introduction into mining answered a few questions for me, it is very user friendly and welcoming!! :)

Happy Mining peoples

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Feather: 6kgZRjhQpLdHxQq4wk9tncbrghV8skC3h2
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Coinye: 5p5keb7gKAnoaDK5HG1SueCRLVgXkivThu

I would also highly recommend CGWatcher to go With Cgminer: http://manotechnology.blogspot.co.uk/p/cgwatcher.html (http://manotechnology.blogspot.co.uk/p/cgwatcher.html)  ::)

hey i m newbie here and wanna do some mining do as you said its mostly work fine but mining nothing wanna need some more info if you can  share any of your instant messaging address. will be very grateful to you waiting for your reply

thanks really enjoyed.

Thanks for the tutorials on mining it will really go a long way.

I must thank you for such a useful and helpful post. I am interested about mining. My electricity is free so i think i would be able to make money profit though mining.

Making a profit by mining is very unlikely.

laptop or my computer is not good enough for mine :)
I mined through better mining tools or through the cloud :)

If he has completely free electricity, he could possibly get some profit from mining.
But, as a general suggestion, there is always risk and so don't invest more than you can lose.

These days mining the altcryptos would be more profitable while compared to BTC.Also could be started at low investment and risk factor is low too.

thanks for the guide for mining :D
now i can mining in my miners

The risk is higher for altcoins.  That's why there is more potential for profit.  People throwing around capitol generates profits and people taking it away equals losses.

Some altcoins lose 98% of their value in one day - Bitcoin has yet to do this.

That's probably one of the best topics I've put my eyes on in the Beginners section by far. Thanks, buddy!

The guide is really useful for beginners but I have to say that actually mining is unprofitable if you can't invest huge amounts of money.

interesting article, thank you for minning guide
but I think the laptop or computer is not good when used for mining
better mining using a mining tool or mining cloud

I have a 1.48 GH duel core processor and 2gb ram but no graphics cards....i use windows 7 laptop on hp brand. can i mining bitcoin? if yes give me the tutorial. or not give me the suggestion and reason........please help me ................

June 2015
You can mine with your laptop, but keep these in mind:

1. The amount of processing power needed to earn just a small amount of bitcoins far exceeds the ability of a CPU or graphics card. A typical CPU mines about 21 satoshis per day. That's worth about 1/2 of 1/1000000 of a dollar.
2. The amount of heat generated will wear out your laptop and lead to an early demise.
3. The cost of electricity will exceed the value of the bitcoins you mine.

If you want to mine a small amount of bitcoins, you need at least a 1 TH/s ASIC miner. If you want to make a profit, you need cheap electricity.

just corrected. please my newbie friends, forget about mining at just buy/start using BTC...

Hello , this is a really good tutorial how to mine . A lot of time passe , but some links are not more enabled .
Can you update this tutorial ?

It is not applicable anymore. You cannot mine bitcoin with PC since few years ago. Difficulty is off the chart. You need to use ASIC and even in this case it's hard to return the investment. You might have better luck trying to mine some altcoins with PC. Check altcoin subforum.