When starting the miner first time....it asks if you are an expert. Say yes...then it will start mining and make a file or files that you can fine tune it. Then after fine tune settings .... relaunch it.
Fine tuning is what I'm doing now myself.
That was a "bug" in 1.1.6
It doesnt happen in 1.1.5 or 1.1.7
It has nothing to do with expert mode.
Expert mode will just ask you to set up custom pool.
Non expert will set up the default one so you just instantly start mining.
Both will create configs.
As far as the cpu...I want the miner to use it but only ~70%...I see I can do that now.
Yep, you can either set the CPU [in cpu.txt] on fewer cores or set the low power mode.
/*
* Thread configuration for each thread. Make sure it matches the number above.
* low_power_mode - This can either be a boolean (true or false), or a number between 1 to 5. When set to true,
* this mode will double the cache usage, and double the single thread performance. It will
* consume much less power (as less cores are working), but will max out at around 80-85% of
* the maximum performance. When set to a number N greater than 1, this mode will increase the
* cache usage and single thread performance by N times.
*
* no_prefetch - Some sytems can gain up to extra 5% here, but sometimes it will have no difference or make
* things slower.
*
* affine_to_cpu - This can be either false (no affinity), or the CPU core number. Note that on hyperthreading
* systems it is better to assign threads to physical cores. On Windows this usually means selecting
* even or odd numbered cpu numbers. For Linux it will be usually the lower CPU numbers, so for a 4
* physical core CPU you should select cpu numbers 0-3.
*
* On the first run the miner will look at your system and suggest a basic configuration that will work,
* you can try to tweak it from there to get the best performance.
*
* A filled out configuration should look like this:
* "cpu_threads_conf" :
* [
* { "low_power_mode" : false, "no_prefetch" : true, "affine_to_cpu" : 0 },
* { "low_power_mode" : false, "no_prefetch" : true, "affine_to_cpu" : 1 },
* ],
* If you do not wish to mine with your CPU(s) then use:
* "cpu_threads_conf" :
* null,
*/
Here you can find different configs from people on different hardware:
https://www.xmrstak.com/I still rather recommend you to mess around with things yourself, rather than just copy pasting a config from there. Use it as a reference for ideas of config. [especially if your specific hardware isnt listed]