Environment setup: Setup Windows environment for mining (2024)

Table of Contents

Enable automatic login Increase virtual memory Change power plan Terminate crashed mining software Install prerequisites for mining software Additional considerations

Enable automatic login

When using Awesome Miner Remote Agent application, with automatic start, Windows must still be configured for automatic login. Applications configured for automatic startup will not start until the user login to Windows.

Enable automatic login to Windows by pressing Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog.
Type netplwiz and press Enter
Uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" and click Apply. Now you will be prompted to enter the account information for the automatic login.

In case the check box isn't visible, please open a command prompt (cmd.exe) with Administrator permissions and run the following first:

reg ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PasswordLess\Device" /v DevicePasswordLessBuildVersion /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Increase virtual memory

Most mining software requires at least 16 GB virtual memory. In systems with many GPU's, even more virtual memory is required to be able to work well with all mining software and algorithms. A good rule of thumb is to allocate 4 GB plus the total amount of memory on all GPU's. When using 5 GPU's with 6 GB of memory each, the virtual memory to allocate should be 4 GB + 5 * 6 GB = 34 GB.

Open Control Panel and go to System
Select Advanced system settings
Click the Settings button in the Performance section
Select the Advanced tab
Click the Change button in the Virtual memory section
Define at least 16 GB virtual memory size

Change power plan

Windows must be configured to not put the mining computer to sleep

Terminate crashed mining software

In some environments when mining software (for example ccminer) is crashing, Windows will show a crash dialog where the user can click Close to terminate the mining process.

Windows should be configured to not show those crash dialogs. They are preventing the process from exiting and it will still be considered running by both Windows and Awesome Miner. Follow these instructions to disable. After the configuration change, Awesome Miner will detect it as a crash and simply restart the mining process.