"If anything wanted to access your wallet?" You are wrong on sooo many levels dude. Let me try to point a few out:

(1) If malware is already active in your system it can shoot Defense+ in the head and still do its dirty work.
     You are aware that with enough privileges (and any malware will gain the privileges it needs, rest assured) it can suspend/terminate other programs, right?
     You do know that any malware author can trivially purchase ready-made modules for detecting and subverting virtually any security program, don't you?
(2) Defense+ will protest you at API-call level of access (the malware asks Windows to open your wallet for reading) or at best at filesystem level.
     Any sophisticated malware author will scrub the file by reading the hard drive on a sector-by-sector basis. The file is never accessed.
     The malware just reads the hard drive's sector 512998random. How does it know which sectors to read? Naturally, by parsing the MFT of the filesystem.
(3) If you elect to keep your machine malware-clean (really amounts to "don't do stupid things with your machine") you don't need the ineffective (see point 2) "fascist" approach.
(4) If you really want to be safe (even against an attacker with physical access to the machine) your best bet is going with cryptography, not with barbed-wire obstacles (what Defense+'s approach amounts to).

Summing it all up, you seem to be going through an awful lot of hoops to protect yourself against poorly written malware. Not the most prudent of approaches, and by a long shot.
Still, some protection is better than none if you feel that's what you need.
May I ask you which version of Windows you are running BTW?

If the attacker has less than 51% of network speed, then even though he could be lucky and mine two (or even three) blocks in a row very fast and thus become the longest block chain, eventually (in half an hour or so) the network will take over the attacker's chain because it's just faster of the two.
Mind you that mining three blocks in a row is very improbable.
The attacker has spent enormous resources in order to give the network a hick-up.

Yes, an attacker briefly achieving the majority of the total hashing power could be thwarted that very same way if the legitimate network generated a few quick blocks in a row.



Yes, and it's bloody damned simple: don't mine for the big pools. I'd say don't mine for ANY pool but suggesting that to a person with 2 or 3 GPUs would be going straight into the realm of absurdity and paranoia. If one is actually worried about a cabal of pool operators colluding to gain the majority of the hash power, they can always mine for p2pool (requires that every miner run their own instance of bitcoind).

...in which case:
OP, please try the following:
If you are using the hardwired PCIE cable, unplug it.
Use only the two modular cables to power the cards.

While you open up the case to re-cable the GPUs, do take care of proper cooling as P4man suggested.

Please don't make me heartbroken Haribo as I know I will be if I lose this pool.
Stales are pretty much extinct here and I'd prefer for it to stay this way.
How about staying true to the old *nix paradigm "Do One Thing and Do It Well"?

Alternative *coins are basically worthless and I don't think anyone actually gives a rat's ass about them.
Litecoin is laughable trying to coexist with Bitcoin. Current btc-e price is 1200 LTC for one BTC.
This CPU-based coin is apparently mined by kids trying to make use of their mining rigs' CPUs forgetting that CPUs use power as well.

Dutch, what are those miners?
350 MHash is what a signle half-decent GPU achieves.
Are you using only very low-end GPUs?

What queue size and thread count per GPU are you using?

Christ, Goat, just get them cards. This thread has been going back and forth for like two weeks.

The hd6870 is a VLIW5 card, therefore we can trivially score it against:

hd 5830: 800 MHz * 1120 SP = 896,000
hd 5850: 725 MHz * 1440 SP = 1,044,000
hd 6770: 850 MHz * 800 SP = 680,000
hd 6850: 775 MHz * 960 SP = 744,000
hd 6870: 900 MHz * 1120 SP= 1,008,000

As can be seen, a stock 6870 is about 12% faster than a stock 5830 and about 3,5% weaker than a stock 5850 card.
It is also 48% faster than a stock 6770 and 35% faster than a 6850 card.

Specs can be found here:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5830/Pages/hd-5830-overview.aspx#2
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/amd-radeon-hd-6000/hd-6870/pages/amd-radeon-hd-6870-overview.aspx#2

[input validation request] have I been inaccurate anywhere in this thread, Art?

Sorry DAT, old fellow, I can't agree.

The reason is, the rails would be actually more appropriately called "virtual rails". They take their input voltage from a common 12V rail and it's only at the OCP (Over Current Protection) chip that current load of each "rail" is being checked. That's the simplest and the only commonly-seen today approach to multi-rail designs. Any voltage difference between the rails should be negligent.


A benefit of this approach is, should a single rail become dangerously overloaded, a good PSU should only disable the troubled rail. Care should be taken never to overload the rail supplying +12V to the CPU and mobo. Only if the load at the common 12V input exceeds the safety limit must the whole PSU shut down.

Although a few designs using two independent 12V circuits were manufactured, they were more complex than necessary, required more components (thus being more expensive), and suffered from the issue you described.

device_id=="ASUS EAH6950_DCII2DI4S1GD5" || OT post.
http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/AMD_Series/EAH6950_DCII2DI4S1GD5/

OP, is that a dedicated mining rig? Try running /usr/bin/xinit instead of /usr/bin/X, k?

*nods his head* P4, DeepC

When I was searching for maximum stable clocks for my cards I did notice that DEAD != DEAD.
When my 6950 DCII crashes, it crashes like a ton of bricks introducing lock-ups of a few dozen seconds to any interaction with the OS.
Apparently, some bigshot kernel-mode code freezes the OS up when attempting to speak with the dead, until it time-outs and lets go.
OTOH, necromancgminer has been doing a terrific job raising the 6770s from the dead with no fuss.

If the OS really froze up,the script wouldn't do you much good.
Mind sharing your reboot-magic? I want to see how your script detects the "lock up" condition.

And yes, do lower your overclock clocks.
Near-death lock-ups and crazy stale counts suggest that at least one of your cards can't take the beating.

In case there are still doubts about PSU efficiency:

Customers prefer buying 80+ certified PSUs than non-certified "junk".
Therefore, manufacturing and selling 80+ certified units is more lucrative.
The manufacturers are interested first and foremost in maximizing profits.
As a result, only as much R&D budget is being allocated to PSU engineering as is necessary to ensure passing the 80+ testing procedures and receiving certification.
Failed designs unable to receive the certification due to design errors are sold to manufacturers building cheap units often bundled with PC cases.

All 80+ certification levels define the 50% load as the one where efficiency must be the highest.
Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that any given PSU, regardless of whether it has or has not been 80+ certified, will work at peak efficiency somewhere around the 50% load mark.

Aren't you getting ahead of yourself?
As has been said before, a freezing attack would require government-level funding. In such case, is it so hard to imagine that the attackers would stockpile a million or so bitcoins?
As to retaining anonymity, the government can use TOR as well as anyone else.

The most devastating attack would be a combination of both approaches - an equivalent of thermonuclear warfare for the bitcoin universe.
Defraud - paralyze, defraud - paralyze. After a single day's worth of hostilities the prognosis would be terminal - why bother if the adversary can strike again?

Firstly, there is no MS-Dos in Windows anymore. The correct term is "command line interpreter".

Your best bet might be going with Sysinternals' Microsoft's Desktops⁽¹⁾ app.
Create a second virtual desktop and move all those obnoxious text-mode windows to it, freeing your main desktop and taskbar.
The Desktops app lives only as an icon in the system tray.

With a little work you can set up a few separate, task-oriented desktops, like main desktop, bitcoin-mining desktop, porn desktop, and donating-to-cgminer-dev desktop.


Links:
(1)  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881

You made my day Deepceleron  
I'd be more than happy to send a fistful of bitcents your way.

The sad truth is, that a significant portion of the "security software" for Windows is little more than nicely chromed and lacquered garbage constantly getting in the way, pretending to be useful.

Why do AV programs have to display flashy pop-ups saying "this file here is ok" or "hard as it might be to believe, I actually managed to update my virus database without BSODing" ??!

Comodo... I never held their software in high regard but they just seem to have jumped the shark.
"Danger! Danger! This app here wants to draw itself a window so it can actually be interacted with. Set condition 2! Set condition 2!"

You're probably right. No panicked linux newbie will have the presence of mind to do a quick check as to how update-rc.d is supposed to be used  
Better to RTFM and then RTFM some more instead of teasing those vindictive daemons  

OP, read this article:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=246

The PSU reviewed there is build on the same platform as yours. They are both manufactured by Andyson according to the same spec. The only difference are stickers, just like with reference GPUs.

Although it might come as a shocker, contrary to what the label might imply, your PSU is NOT capable of delivering 1200W in continuous mode.

Moreover, your PSU has all its 12V power divided into four rails, each of them limited to 40A (480W).
You need to take very good care when loading up these rails.
If you connect your PSU in such a way that one rail becomes overloaded, as the PSU heats up and as a loses some efficiency (so-called de-rating), it might shut off on you.

This is a half-decent PSU but the rail distribution makes it quite hard to connect it the right way.
You'll need to read the manual and figure out which connectors to use to distribute the load evenly across the rails.

And timing. Mind you DAT, timing is a crucial but is a very little known parameter as it's not measurable without a spectroscope.
Like I said, on machine startup the PSU has 10 milliseconds to sort its voltages out. If the industrial one achieves stable power levels in 50 ms, the rig is certainly not going to work.

[executive summary]
I strongly advise you to abandon your plan of going with a non-standard power supply.
You're with all likelihood making a serious mistake which will cost you dearly.

[technical explanation]
Your industrial power supply would have to strictly conform to the ATX specification to be compatible with the computer hardware.
Since it was never built for powering PCs, there is no reason whatsoever why it would be.
A heavy-duty industrial power supply might not even be a regulated power supply, much less PC-grade.


An ATX power supply must meet some very strict criteria:
(1) all the voltage rails (in your case just 12V) must never deviate by more than 5% from their nominal values at any load,
(2) electric noise and/or ripple may never exceed 120mV,
(3) upon start-up, the transient voltage when the rails are becoming ready must not exceed their nominal voltages by move than 10%,
(4) those power rails must become fully ready in 1020ms (the rising edge of the transient voltage may not be longer than 1020ms).


All of these potential failure points have very serious implications for the well-being of your hardware.
Failing even one aspect of the specification might at best result in unstable work or failure to start at all. At worst, you will fry your machine and possibly your new power supply with it.

You'd have to consult with the manufacturer (someone technical, like an engineer involved in product development) and ask them about compliance with ATX spec.
You will get no written guarantees, however, and if you damage a whole rig-full of expensive GPUs there will be no one to reimburse you.


If you decide to follow your plan (which I suggest you not do), please test that power supply on some junk-pc you won't regret killing.
The test should last at least two weeks and significant loads would have to be applied. You will have to find some way of creating those test loads.
I won't even go into wiring that thing up properly and clamping all the connectors.


There was a very similar case here with someone burning two FPGA boards (ZTEX boards, I believe) with a crappy, non-regulated power supply.
The nominal voltage was 12V but transients had to be at least 18V because the 16V-rated VRMs burned in seconds. Needless to say, that failure was not covered by the warranty and that individual could by no measure be called a happy camper.

The SecurityNow podcast, episode 278, released 10 Feb 2011.
Bitcoin was the main subject of that episode.

Started casual CPU mining soon after that but it wasn't until Summer (the price bubble) that I'd invested into a half-decent GPU-mining rig.