Topic: Mining for non-programmers? (Read 391 times)

Hello, Bitcoin Forum!

I'm a student (economics) doing some studies on the effects mining has on the prices of various cryptocurrencies. Here's a problem: I'm not a programmer. I have no idea how computer programs are written, and while I know my way around windows 7, I can't make heads or tails of the different files, and most tutorials seem to be written for people who already have a strong  The extent of my network protocol experience is all hardware from 5 years ago (took a few CISCO courses), but I learned nothing about software. In summation, I know tons about Forex trading, stocks, stock analysis, arbitrage, derivatives, federal currencies, inflation, market making, etc. but nothing about how to actually access the cryptocurrency itself.

Or, in other words, I feel like an expert marksman with great aim, but has no idea how to load these guns.

I'm not in a position to go buy $2500 worth of computing equipment for a single paper either, so I'll be using my own laptop (Windows 7 Core 2nd gen i5 w/ radeon 5XXX graphics card) so I want to be able to tap into some low-difficulty currencies just to see how it works.

Here's my process so far:

I downloaded a mining client ("***-qt file, where *** is the name of the currency) and got an account on a pool for that client. I made a worker. The worker's username is my site username (on the mining site) with a period and then the worker's name. The password shows up as "x".

I downloaded a .zip file for cgminer.

I created a batch file for cgminer with the single line: (but not in quotes) "cgminer -o http://xxx.xxxxxxx.net:#### -u username -p password

I have done NOTHING else, no configurations, no USB sticks, no edits to files, etc. My network connection is strong and stable, and I get this error every time on my command prompt after running the batch file:

"Pool 0 slow/down or url or credentials invalid."

I've tried a million different combinations of passwords, usernames, urls, and ports but I keep getting the same thing.  I've tried both "x" and my profile password, both the profile username and the username of the worker as well. After a few seconds, the command prompt goes all black.

I'm testing it currently on a Windows XP netbook, and once I can confirm that mining is actually happening, then I can repeat the steps on my more powerful laptop. But it doesn't look like the mining is actually happening at all.

Is there some important step I am missing? More importantly, is there a general 'guide' to mining? Every tutorial I find is specific to JUST ONE currency, and doesn't explain how or what to do really, it just assumes that if you're in that far, you already know the programming jargon.



If you guys can help me out, you can be sure I'll stick around.