Firstly, I would like to thank @pfunk for the most excellent guide for windows people trying to take on this daunting task.

Tutorial Here

1. Installing Virtual Machine and Linux

This was not bad at all, the tutorial is very straight forward and makes it as painless as possible. I am pretty familiar with mining crypto, and I have always waited for the windows compiled versions of miners, but this makes me want to jump on the newer coins that are only linux based wallets and miners and try them out! I admit, I did use the widows based miner for Steem but it seems to just have so many problems! (not to say the linux version is much better, we will see when I get it fully working)

2. Troubleshooting

This is where you make your money. After following the easy steps, I run into issues. Since I was following a dummy guide as well, I have no idea where to start with my problems. My problems include, but are not limited to

• blockchain not syncing
• blockchain getting stuck on a hardfork
• mining freezing
• mining not mining
• no blocks found

So I left my 2 8 core computers up and running for over a day, and BAM I finally found a POW block.

3. Quick Explanation of mining for Steem

From my experience (and it is quite limited) with Steem, this is how it works.

• a miner will mine mine mine for as long as it takes to produce a block, and once they do, they are put into the queue
• The queue is like, a lottery for the lottery. In order to get into the queue you have to find a block, once you find a block, you are now given the "chance" to actually mine a block and get a reward
• each round there are 20 "witnesses", 19 of which are voted on by the community, and one little miner
• The poor little miner tried to make a block before the bully witnesses do so he can get his 1 SP and get thrown back into the bottom of the pile to climb his way back up while the witnesses just sit there and laugh at their wallets getting fatter

Started from the bottom now we

sorry, can't see it? let me help you out

ENHANCE...

look guys, I am on TV. But seriously, took me a freaking day to produce a POW block and get on the 110 long miner list and work my way to the top. I did it Mom!
Nicest thing is I ACTUALLY FOUND A BLOCK! (and got my 1SP)

4. Next up... More mining

I have some 2U Server racks I am trying to build a beowulf cluster to mine with, along with my 2 gaming PC's with virtual machines hashing away, (while mining ETH and ETC on my GPUs) but there are plenty of syncing problems that will keep me busy all the time for Steem. If you are interested in mining Steem let me know and I will attempt to assist as much as I can. If you are a fellow miner and you understand more of this than I do, we should be friends.

Thanks for Reading and Come Again Soon!!

#steem #steemit #steemdown #steemapps #whales #steempoweredfreedom #realtime #blockchain #cryptocurrency #steemtools #appsforsteem