I believe because it's generally accepted that cpu mining is pretty fruitless. Just something I heard, someone else should confirm/deny though.

Makes sense. I'm not sure what's considered a high hashrate, but good to know. Any place to find more info on the fees thing and how that works?

I've looked around the wiki and such, and though there are things stating it in ways, I didn't find anything explicitly answering this question. If all I do is mine, then is the only way I'll receive bitcoins is if I complete a block? I read something about fees, but didn't understand it well and was wondering if that was another way of getting coins through simple mining? Just looking for a good explanation I can understand.

Maybe a dumb question, but how do I know for sure when the client is done downloading blocks and actually working on them?

Good to know. Again, in case it was overlooked in my last post, Any recommendations on places to read up on this stuff? Like, from noob to advanced? I'd like to progress and learn as quickly as I can. Safely of course.

Alright, I know about Catalyst Control Center. Thanks a lot. Any recommendations on places to read up on this stuff? Like, from noob to advanced? I'd like to progress and learn as quickly as I can. Safely of course.

Again, very new, so is that an option I can find on my computer, or is that a program?

Was going to post this in technical support, but maybe someone useful will read it here. Just new to mining, but I've heard that overclocking the gpu is helpful. Thing is, I've never tried anything like that. Any good resources to look into? I'd like to know the risks and how to minimize them, and the benefits as well. I have an ATI Radeon HD4870. Thanks in advance for the help.

Ah, that makes sense! I already posted a few topics and such, so I was wondering what happened all of a sudden. A PM would have been nice.

Thanks for the help, as always, I appreciate it.

I see threads on the declining price of bitcoins, and I'm just curious as to where I can see these numbers? Thanks in advance.

0.3.22-beta

Bumping out of desperation. Any ideas on what I might not have tried?

I tried running bitcoin until all blocks were downloaded, then using guiminer. Again, no good. I tried launching bitcoind, since it made some difference while downloading blocks. But again, it opens an empty terminal window, and using guiminer brings the "problems communicating with bitcoin RPC" again.

Restarting didn't work. I ran bitcoind, a terminal window popped up and is completely blank. Can't type anything into it. But guiminer now says bitcoin is downloading blocks again. Any ideas?

Note: I'm not very proficient with windows command line.

So I've just started today, running the original bitcoin client. It's currently downloading blocks. I ran guiminer and used it to launch bitcoin in server mode. I also edited my bitcoin.conf as I've seen recommended before (posted below). And I also tried using a shortcut trick by adding -server to the target field in the shortcut properties. Problem is, when I first started guiminer, it said in the lower left corner "Downloading blocks" which looked right, because that's what bitcoin was doing. Now however it says "Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC" bitcoin is still downloading blocks, should be almost done, but I'd like to know what's going on? Also, should my cpu usage be elevated even when it's just downloading blocks? or does that mean bitcoin is already computing as well?

bitcoin.conf reads

#JSON-RPC
server=1
rpcuser=***
rpcpassword=***
rpcallowip=all


And yes, I've checked the similar thread in the forums

I keep getting the "Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC" message, can anyone help? I've tried the solutions here to the best of my ability. The original Bitcoin client is still downloading blocks, but the message on guiminer showed "downloading blocks" until just a little bit ago.

Good to know, thanks again. I guess I'll get started, try it out on my own, then maybe join a pool. Still need to find places to learn more in depth on all this stuff. The help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

This looks great, thank you! One quick question, should I create a wallet and such first using the official client? Again, I've been looking into this for a bit, and I'd like to think I'm not an idiot, but still not 100% sure on the specifics of these things.

I've been doing a bit of research into this over the last few weeks and finally want to get started. The problem I'm having is finding a well recommended client to use that will utilize my GPU. I've searched the forums, and though I've tried to persevere, it still feels a bit daunting. If anyone could point me to a no-nonsense guide to setting things up, that'd be great. I haven't downloaded any sort of client, haven't started at all in fact. Not sure if it's necessary, but I currently have an ATI HD4870. Thank you in advanced, any help is appreciated.