What's the best CPU miner and how do I run it in Windows 7?

[Bryan_B_Trying]

I want to know what the best CPU miner is, and how to run it in Windows 7.  Thank you very much for all answers!

[lost in the wild]

Can't tell you what the best miner or pool is, but I used the instructions at http://www.newslobster.com/bitcoin/how-to-set-up-pooled-bitcoin-mining-in-windows to start my pooled mining.

[Bryan_B_Trying]

Can't tell you what the best miner or pool is, but I used the instructions at http://www.newslobster.com/bitcoin/how-to-set-up-pooled-bitcoin-mining-in-windows to start my pooled mining.

That guide doesn't tell me how to use the miner.  Like, I want to know what I need to do, to start mining with it.

[swusc2]

I just got the moderator to move the sticky Beginners guide to here. If you go to the sticky in the newbie forum and there a list of guides to help set up your mining client.

[lost in the wild]

That guide doesn't tell me how to use the miner.  Like, I want to know what I need to do, to start mining with it.
[/quote]

If you look at the beginning of the guide, it will link to another article about setting up solo mining.  While it is geared to GPU mining, you can use the same instructions to CPU mine.  That is not a great idea because it will take years to find a block using yoru CPU.

Basically, start the commandline without a device listing.  It will complain and list all your devices.  You will see the device number for a CPU and any compatible GPUs.

[muyoso]

Is it even profitable at all to mine with the CPU?  With the possible reduction in life to the CPU, electricity costs ad the fact that your computer is now semi useless, I don't think its worth it.  Assuming you have the latest quad core from AMD/Intel, you are gonna pull maybe 20Mhash/s.  That would net you 5 dollars at the current price at the end of a week of mining, and it won't even be that because the difficulty is set to go up in a couple days.  When the difficulty goes up, a week of mining with the LATEST quad core would net you bout three fitty at the current market price.  Absolutely not worth it.

[BombaUcigasa]

Ignore previous replies, this is what you need to do to get 1 Mhash/sec/core/Ghz in windows 7 without stressing your OS and allowing you to use the computer normally.

This is the miner I recommend: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3486 (download from http://ufasoft.com/open/bitcoin/ )
This is the pool I recommend: http://bitcoins.lc/ (make an account, create a worker)
This is what you put in a miner.bat file near the miner exe: start /low bitcoin-miner.exe -u USERNAME -p PASSWORD -a 5 -t 4 -v -o http://bitcoins.lc:8080

You could replace "-t 4" with 2xCores if you wish (preferably not doing so for HT cores, just real cores).

[BombaUcigasa]

Is it even profitable at all to mine with the CPU?  With the possible reduction in life to the CPU, electricity costs ad the fact that your computer is now semi useless, I don't think its worth it. 

Using history this is what I can say: Supposed I mined 0.1 BTC a month ago when the price was about 5$ / BTC. At that time, the cost to create that 0.1 BTC was about 0.5$ and it's reward was 0.5$. Not really optimal.

Fast forward today: 0.1 BTC costs 2.2$, and you paid 0.3$ to buy it. Is it worth it?