As a Canadian, is there any way for me to prove my residence? I don't pay utilities, my cell phone is paid with the cable bill as it's cheaper bundled, and I obviously don't have private health insurance. They won't even take bank statements, which seems ridiculous to me.

n00b question here, how do I back up my wallet? I know it's here on the forum somewhere, but my HDD has been acting up, and I'd rather not lose all my bitcoins because I couldn't find it.

Which would be a better deal for mining with? Two 5830s will cost me $230, and one 5850 will cost me $185. Power consumption isn't an issue.

Alternatively I could get a 6950 2gb and flash it for $260, but it's a bit out of my price range.

What sort of flags should I use to mine with my GTX 460? EVGA precision tuner is showing  only 25% GPU usage, which lines up with the 16 Mhash I'm getting. I'd like to run it maxed when I'm not at the computer.

I'm trying to use puddinpop's CUDA rpcminer to mine with my GTX 460 in GUIminer, but it won't go past 'Connecting'. I'm able to use the 4way and CPU miners fine. Do I need to install certain drivers or add a flag or something?

Sorry to bother you guys; any help is much appreciated.

I already tried to get this resolved in the mining forum, but nobody could help me. Basically, whenever I try to mine for bitcoins, either from the bitcoin client (I know it's pointless) or from GUIminer to slush's pool, I get stuck on 'Connecting'. I've tried disabling the firewall (Win7), but it still won't connect. I'm trying to use either the CPU or CUDA miner (i7-930 and GTX 460).

In fact, the Bitcoin client itself hasn't even been able to download the blocks required to authenticate itself, and just shows '0 connections'

EDIT: I've been able to fix the problem with the Bitcoin client by placing my computer outside the router's firewall (A temp. fix, probably not a good idea to leave it that way), but I still can't connect through GUI miner.

I've been trying for a couple days now to start mining, but I've been unable to connect to a mining pool. I've tried mining straight from the Bitcoin client, and using GUIminer with slush's pool, but it wont connect. Help would be much appreciated.