Use CGWatcher. It does this among many, many other things.

http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/2013/07/profitability-mining-in-cgwatcher.html

Official thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=185553.200

Newbie thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159267

You created an account on Bitcointalk so you could post about being new to mining? Not mining bitcoins... mining as in going out and actually mining... for precious metals or whatever it is you're looking for? Is this supposed to be clever or have you just spent too much time underground?

Regardless, good luck. Real life mining is probably more lucrative than bitcoin mining for most people anyway, even if you're just mining dropped change in parking lots.

Creating a debug report doesn't have to be done while it is happening, but it only includes the last 25 log entries so the sooner, the better. You can also attach cgwatcher.log to the email so then I could see all log entries that way. The debug report also shows information about the last time the miner was started (or attempted), so creating it after a failed start/restart attempt is important to collect that data.

This doesn't seem to be a CGWatcher problem nor a CGMiner problem, but I can't say that for certain without more information. I'm assuming it's a driver crash that is causing the sick GPU, then Windows is taking longer than usual to recover. If you can provide as much info as possible I'll try to help you get it resolved. Windows Event Viewer may also show relevant errors and warnings that occurred around or after the time of the driver crash/sick GPU. It could be failing hardware in that computer (like a failing hdd or bad GPU) if you're using the same image on other computers without this problem.

Justin

Can you close any open cgminer windows and CGWatcher, then re-open CGWatcher (so a clean start). Try starting the miner and when it fails to connect to it, go to the Tests tab in CGWatcher and click 'Create Debug Report'. Then email that report to my email in readme.txt. It will hopefully provide some additional information to see if anything is going wrong in CGWatcher, or if this is a Windows privilege issue (which has happened before, but should still be fixable).

Thanks,
Justin

You're absolutely right it's guilty until proven innocent. You should be cautious of anything here, especially offering free money and especially in the Newbies section.

The burden of proof lies on the OP to prove it is not a scam, especially when all signs point that way.

And I know this as well as anyone because I was new here when I first posted CGWatcher, a program that monitors and controls miners and therefore requires a lot of trust. I expected that it would be looked at suspiciously until it was proven to be safe. I would be leery of anyone playing the "innocent until proven guilty" card here.

This is the Newbie forum and there is nothing wrong with people who have more experience here warning newcomers of potential scams. I don't believe the link had been removed at the time I posted, but maybe it had and I didn't see it. Regardless, these types of "offers" are deceptive at best. You invest time answering questions only to find out you have to give your cell phone number to complete the task. What happens with your cell phone number after that is anyone's guess... but you're going to be paying for these bitcoins one way or another... often with charges showing up on your cell phone bill for things you didn't consent to.

I also made it clear that I was assuming the worst and used words like probably because I admittedly hadn't clicked the link to see what happened next... but I am familiar with these "complete survey to get free stuff" offers. Hell I even apologized in advance in case I was wrong. By what you wrote, you seem more distrustful than the OP... so you're either in on this racket, have a similar racket yourself, or are just one of those people who knows more than everyone else. If you've seen scams on this forum, it usually takes big bold letters stating it is a scam before some people will stop and think. And even with the big bold letters there are still people who will completely ignore it and ask how they get their free bitcoins.

If you want free bitcoins (or fractions of bitcoins) to play with, look for faucets.

In case it is not clear, which happens a lot in Newbie threads...

This is probably a scam. Do not click links. Do not fill out surveys asking for personal info. Do not download anything.

Even if it is a link to "complete an offer", it is very likely there is going to be malware ahead. I can't say for certain if the OP is intentionally scamming or just misguided, but nothing about this smells legitimate. That said, I'm sure there will still be replies after mine from people asking how they can participate and complaining that they haven't gotten their coins or that coins magically disappeared from their wallets. If you're still curious and going to do it anyway, use a different browser like Chrome Canary that has not been used for anything else and run it in Sandboxie inside a virtual machine preferably on a computer you don't use for anything important that can be wiped without inconvenience and still do not give out personal info in surveys... especially cell phone numbers.

Remember, if the OP is sending you a private key... he also has the private key. That means he has access to that wallet just as much as you do.

And no file type is completely safe inside a browser. Even images can be injected with javascript. And just because a file has a txt extension does not mean the server is set to treat it as text only.

OP if you're not trying to scam anyone I apologize, but this forum is frequently the target of scammers and without clicking your links to find out exactly what it is you're trying to do, I'm playing the "rather safe than sorry" card and assuming the worst.

I went to BTC-e for the trading, but stayed for the trollbox.

I started out on Mt.Gox, as many do, but pulled everything out of there a long time ago when warning signs first started appearing.

Before using any exchange, research as much as possible to see if others have had problems getting their money out. Also make sure they support 2-factor authentication and use it! The only thing that concerns me about BTC-e is the language barrier with support, but I've only needed support once and PMing dev got it fixed within a couple minutes.

Assuming you're not trying to hide mining from the user, you can use CGWatcher to start the miner window hidden or minimized, then set CGWatcher itself to start minimized or minimized to the system tray. CGWatcher can be set to start with Windows, and it can be set to launch the miner on startup. A splash screen is still shown because it is not intended to be used to run the miner covertly.

On top of that, you can do the following with CGWatcher:

• Set it to increase intensity when the computer is idle, and lower it back when the computer is no longer idle
• Set it to start mining when the computer is idle and stop mining when it's no longer idle
• Set it to decrease intensity or stop mining when a specific program is running (e.g. BF2.exe)
• Set it to increase intensity or start mining again when the specific program stops running
• Set it to disable a device when a program is running or when the computer is not idle, and re-enable the device when the program stops or computer is idle
• Schedule mining to start and stop at specific times
• Schedule profitability mining where it will switch to mine your most profitable coin (or a variety of other coin-related properties)
• Use online config files, even between several miners, so you can change settings in one place, then use variables on each miner to customize the config to that miner specifically
• Use CGRemote to have complete control over mining and profiles, including remote miners
• Many other features and settings to make managing miners as easy as possible

More info: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=185553.200

The code for donation mining has not changed since it was first implemented. Two nights ago ltc.kattare.com (Burnside's pool) went down (http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1mojul/burnsides_down_i_cant_connect_to_their_website/) for the first time in quite some time which means a backup donation pool is added (probably the first time this has ever been needed) and that this (ltc.kattare.com) pool was probably not removed correctly.

It is not that the pool was added while donation mining was disabled... it is that it was not removed correctly. And there are several checks in place to ensure this happens, but perhaps I need to set it to restart the miner if it fails to remove it. Or maybe there is additional code I need to write in CGWatcher. In the end CGWatcher can tell the miner to remove the pool but if it doesn't, the only last option is to restart the miner while it looks like I'll be adding.

Donation mining has been available for several months and you're the first person to ever report a problem with it, so please watch before you start making accusations. If you don't want to use the program that's fine... but it should be clear by now I'm not attempting to scam anyone. If I was going to have CGWatcher switch to a pool without your consent, don't you think I would skip writing it to the log?

Anyway, thanks for reporting this so I can look into it and correct it.

Edit: After checking burnside's pool, I do not see any significant increase to the hashrate (of my own GPUs) over the past 24 hours other than 1-2 hour bumps, which happens frequently. Nor is there anything exceptional on coinotron (the backup pool) which has only mined 1 LTC up to this point. But if you feel that you were donation mining without your consent, please send me your log and litecoin address and I'll send you a litecoin to make up for it, which is 10-20x the value you would have mined for me in that hour (or if you feel it was more than that, I'll make sure you are paid back 10x whatever you mined.)

I agree. I don't think this will ever beat cgminer as far as hashing speed (especially if you're planning on using cpu only), and creating an "AI" that works better than brute force would be big news to the cryptography world, not just mining. I'm not going to say it's impossible but it's something many people smarter than I have been trying to do for years, and many of them would say it's impossible... at least with current technology in a reasonable amount of time.

This page on using SAT solvers for mining might interest you: http://jheusser.github.io/2013/02/03/satcoin.html. I don't know enough to tell you whether it's possible or feasible, but any idea to improve efficiency over brute forcing is interesting at the very least.

That said, your project is a great way for programmers that don't know C to see how hashing works (someone just asked about this on reddit and I pointed them here). And if you get more programmers involved and do come up with some creative way to improve efficiency, you can always convert that to C and/or OpenCL later.

Even though you may have your expectations set a little high, I appreciate the effort. My advice would be to lower expectations a little and think of it as a community/learning project (maybe move to project development section) and people might take you more seriously. Right now you're saying "I'm going to use a VW Van to drag race against a Ferrari" and you should be saying "Here's my VW Van and I'm looking for people who want to learn about engines and see if we can make it faster."


On a somewhat related note, there's also a C# wrapper for Bitcoin-qt someone created and posted to reddit a while back: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1h1tfg/up_to_date_net_c_wrapper_for_bitcoinqt_video. I haven't looked at that code or your code yet but I plan to one of these days.

Please stop reviving dead scam threads. No matter how sad your story or clever your comment, nobody is going to send you bitcoins because of a reply here. Start a new post called "Give your sob story to solicit donations" instead of potentially pointing people to this OP and his trap attempting to collect personal info.


In other words, stop replying to this thread.


Yes, I am not lost on the irony of this reply, but it is a necessary evil.

Yeah I wouldn't have used your site anyway so no business lost here, but the fact that you're lying about being a trauma surgeon when in other posts you claim to have worked in the porn site industry for the last ten years but quit "because your boss wouldn't accept bitcoin" is odd. (And please don't try to convince us you did both at the same time.) I don't believe the story about quitting over bitcoin either (perhaps you were fired for lying?), but I think I'd prefer a porn site made by someone with 10 years experience in porn sites as opposed to a trauma surgeon... so in this case the truth would be better than the story you've concocted. But what do I know... maybe there is a fetish for porn sites created by pathological liars claiming to be trauma surgeons. Good luck!

I love the Newbies forum.

Look at CGRemote (http://minerremote.com), it works with miners on any OS but it has many more features for Windows miners running CGWatcher.

See if GUIMiner Scrypt will work. It's still cgminer behind the scenes, but it should at least rule out a config problem since it simplifies this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150331.0

It might be worth uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling. This means getting the cleanup tool from AMD to make sure the old one is gone completely (you must do this), then reinstall. Perhaps try a different version. Check mining hardware comparison sites to see if you can find what others are using.

Also delete kernels (scrypt**************.bin) between changing things so they get rebuilt.

If your goal is to make this the fastest scrypt miner, you're not going to do it with a CPU miner. Maybe you meant the fastest CPU scrypt miner?

If the former, check out OpenCL.NET, which may make it easier to implement GPU mining using OpenCL. I don't know that you'll beat cgminer, but if you're serious about wanting to be the fastest then OpenCL is the way to go.

If the latter, well... good luck!

Dreaded_Source:

It's ok if they're blank, that just means they are using the default paths (which is inside the CGWatcher folder). The Desktop issue seems to come up frequently. I've added notifications in CGWatcher if it finds itself inside the Program Files, Program Files (x86), Windows, etc. folders to warn the user of potential permission issues. Perhaps I need to add the Desktop folder to that list.

I didn't see anything that stood out in the information you sent other than it appeared that cgminer closed immediately after starting several times, which could indicate bad config settings... though this could possibly be caused by Desktop-related permission issues where CGWatcher is unable to write to batch or config files when it needs to before starting the miner.

Let me know if moving it from the Desktop folder changes anything.


Tigggger:

Thanks, I'll look into this. You're not setting any pools in the config file, correct? It's probably just a matter of CGWatcher applying the arguments to the config file twice for some reason, which then adds the pools twice. While it shouldn't hurt anything, it isn't the expected behavior so I'll correct this in the next update.

Can you email me your cgwatcher.log file? It should have debug log entries that will hopefully show what was happening, because aside from a failing hard drive there is nothing that should cause 26 minutes to pass in between the first and second log entries. Also go to the Tests tab and click Create Debug Report, and include that in the email as well.

If there was a problem with profiles loading, check the ProfilesDataPath setting in CGWatcher.exe.ini and make sure it is pointing to the correct location. There were issues with this that were fixed in 1.3.1, but if the setting was set incorrectly by a previous version you'll have to either manually correct it or delete CGWatcher.exe.ini to have a new one generated when you start CGWatcher. This is also true of the VariablesDataPath setting in the ini file, which works the same way and had the same issue from previous versions.

Also don't use folders on the desktop to store CGWatcher or the miner folder, as Windows treats the desktop a little differently than normal folders and permission issues seem to creep up. I recommend creating a folder like C:\Mining to hold all mining-related stuff (so C:\Mining\cgminer, C:\Mining\CGWatcher, etc.)

Whether the monitor is plugged in or not should not have any effect on CGWatcher. But I can't say for sure what is going wrong without more information.

Have you tried cgminer? Bfgminer is a fork of cgminer, so the two are maintained by different developers and one may work better than the other in certain situations. The config is essentially the same unless you are using USB devices which you aren't if you're scrypt mining. You can download cgminer builds (compiled with scrypt) here: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/

The thread is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0

If you're still looking for remote monitoring options, perhaps you could create a separate, larger version with .NET 4.0 client profile and CGWatcher? Then you can use CGRemote, which when finished will give you the best control of remote miners. CGRemote works with CGWatcher or the miner directly (on all operating systems), but there is obviously significant additional features if you have CGWatcher running on your miners. Eventually I'd like to create small listener apps that will handle the remote commands the same as CGWatcher, but OS-independent and smaller as that's all they'll do, so that all miners can have full functionality (profiles, file explorer, variables, etc). That's pretty far down the ever-expanding to-do list though.

http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/p/cgremote.html

CGRemote is Windows only, but for a community that spends $300 on a GPU without flinching, buying a $200 Windows laptop to be able to fully manage all of your miners anywhere you go shouldn't be a problem... if they don't already have one, that is.

I'll add you to the beta if you're interested.