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?
try restarting bitcoin. or use bitcoind getinfo to see if rpc is working