I'm having the same problem on a Linux box and it's extremely frustrating! The debug.log file can be found but there's no mention of a merkel hash or nonce in it.
Apologies if this seems too basic but if you're a Linux noob (like me), it may be useful.
To make a folder for the log files to go to, you need to go to your $HOME folder and you need to run
Then to run the -testnet, run this code:
testcoind -noirc -testnet -datadir=/$HOME/.testcoin/
Go into you home folder and type in ls -a to see folders that aren't visible with the ls command. Inside the $HOME/.testcoin/ folder there should be a testnet folder with a list of files that can be viewed with the ls command. The debug.log should be one of them and it can be opened with pico debug.log . Hopefully yours will have more info than mine.
All that mine contains is:
TestCoin version v1.0.0.0-ga9113b5-tst (2013-12-30 11:33:50 +0000)
Startup time: 12/30/13 13:02:48
Default data directory /root/.testcoin
Used data directory //root/.testcoin/proto/testnet3
Bound to [::]:45883
Bound to 0.0.0.0:45883
Loading block index...
dbenv.open LogDir=//root/.testcoin/proto/testnet3/database ErrorFile=//root/.testcoin/proto/testnet3/db.log
223ac289612d6cdd0aae9a96c012e82ee0360d9afb7b4bae18a09552208219a1
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
c4dc961b5224ce2a49a927a56f5723b9cd00f23b366a2aad90dae7720a4df44d