# Building Zcash on windows? **URL:** \ **Category:** zcashd client\ **Created:** [January 29, 2016, 6:39pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194 "2016-01-29T18:39:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ajqjjj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c2a13f/32.png) [@ajqjjj](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/ajqjjj)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2016, 6:39pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/1 "2016-01-29T18:39:49Z")
how building, Zcash on windows ---
**Author:** ![sean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@sean](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/sean)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/2 "2016-01-29T18:41:19Z")
We don’t support Windows yet, unfortunately. Currently Zcash can only be built reliably on Linux. ---
**Author:** ![CCQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3ab097/32.png) [@CCQ](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/CCQ)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 4:45am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/3 "2016-03-02T04:45:14Z")
No hurry, but I’m interested in a Windows version as well, at least for zcash 1.0. Will the powers that be notice this as a request or should I attempt to request it in some other way? ---
**Author:** ![adam](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/adam/32/70_2.png) [@adam](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/adam)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 5:47am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/4 "2016-03-02T05:47:00Z")
And OS X, as you probably know… ([I’ve successfully built Zcash on OS X](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/ive-successfully-built-zcash-on-os-x-ask-me-anything/371) …) ---
**Author:** ![blackhatzw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ce73a5/32.png) [@blackhatzw](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/blackhatzw)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2016, 11:50am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/5 "2016-03-07T11:50:53Z")
When will Zcash support Windows? ---
**Author:** ![zooko](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/zooko/32/32232_2.png) [@zooko](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/zooko)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2016, 8:45pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/6 "2016-03-09T20:45:44Z")
I notice this request! And it motivates me to support Windows. (Especially because Windows is big in China and I want to get lots of Chinese users.) However, as I said over on [How to mine Zcash - #23 by zooko](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/how-to-mine-zcash/48/23), we don’t have the engineering capacity to support Windows for the 1.0 launch, so what this motivates me to do is to schedule Windows support for the next release. ---
**Author:** ![CCQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3ab097/32.png) [@CCQ](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/CCQ)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2016, 9:42pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/7 "2016-03-09T21:42:13Z")
Thanks for the notice. Better to know early than late. This knowledge motivates me to try to get something linux flavored up and running somewhere, somehow. Zcash is the first coin I’ve considered mining. I’ve already learned a lot just reading up. Not even really sure why I want to do it, except that I was reading Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist and Evolution of Everything and some sections on trade and the early development of currencies public and private caught my interest. I guess I’m hoping I’ll learn a little more in the middle of it than from watching from the outside. It’s a cool notion that regular people can now do more than just exchange currency, an idea simultaneously futuristic and archaic. Anyway, good luck to you and your team. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![blackhatzw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ce73a5/32.png) [@blackhatzw](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/blackhatzw)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 3:00am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/8 "2016-03-10T03:00:42Z")
Cool, thanks very much for considering this, and what mining software should miners use, will you guys develop one for miners? ---
**Author:** ![zooko](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/zooko/32/32232_2.png) [@zooko](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/zooko)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 3:48am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/9 "2016-03-10T03:48:35Z")
Yes, we’ll release some software that can do Zcash mining. We already have an experimental “toy miner” in Python if you want to experiment with it: [GitHub - str4d/zcash-pow: The proof-of-work algorithm for Zcash](https://github.com/str4d/zcash-pow) ---
**Author:** ![blackhatzw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ce73a5/32.png) [@blackhatzw](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/blackhatzw)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2016, 8:46am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/10 "2016-03-13T08:46:13Z")
Dear zooko I try to mine Zcash with this “toy miner” by the command ./pow.py, it seems it did successfully but I can’t see the mined coins in my wallet, what’s the right way to do mining? message: Mined block! Previous hash: 1a144a0d9fa8ee7db7061501a0d2633d397045401a466e79e58ddd08d435ddbc Current hash: 0a0830b1da07d300b7155d43e1a3322723136d71bbfc8a5e0420c0454362c8e5 Nonce: 2 Time to find: 0:00:20.009135 my wallet: { “walletversion” : 60000, “balance” : 0.00000000, “unconfirmed\_balance” : 0.00000000, “immature\_balance” : 0.00000000, “txcount” : 0, “keypoololdest” : 1457853611, “keypoolsize” : 101 } ---
**Author:** ![zooko](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/zooko/32/32232_2.png) [@zooko](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/zooko)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2016, 2:50pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/11 "2016-03-13T14:50:58Z")
The “toy miner” doesn’t actually generate any coins, it just rus the mining proof-of-work algorithm by itself. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_J](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/scott_j/32/174_2.png) [@Scott\_J](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Scott_J)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2016, 4:19pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/12 "2016-04-20T16:19:12Z")
If it will not be possible to mine using windows from launch, it would be great if someone would be so kind as to write a fool-proof step-by-step guide for mining from linux. Perhaps assuming that the user already has a particular flavour already installed. ---
**Author:** ![blackhatzw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ce73a5/32.png) [@blackhatzw](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/blackhatzw)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2016, 3:25am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/13 "2016-04-22T03:25:57Z")
Actually it’s very complicated to build it on Windows, since there are many versions of windows, it’s okay not to support windows on the beginning due to resource limited. ---
**Author:** ![Voluntary](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/voluntary/32/4343_2.png) [@Voluntary](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Voluntary)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2016, 10:30pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/14 "2016-06-19T22:30:43Z")
I make no attempt to keep up with such developments until well after they’ve graduated from fad status but I’ve heard of Docker applications… Is this a reasonable, low-calorie route to ZCash on windows? Or is it just another way of doing what VirtualBox does? ---
**Author:** ![ajqjjj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c2a13f/32.png) [@ajqjjj](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/ajqjjj)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 12:01pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/15 "2016-10-19T12:01:27Z")
even without version stable for windows? ---
**Author:** ![anon47418038](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@anon47418038](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/anon47418038)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/16 "2016-10-20T19:54:20Z")
Unfortunately I’ve gotten not a penny or a single satoshi so far for my crowdfunding efforts to support working on a Windows build. I’ve gotten all dependencies to build with the bitcoin-inherited depends system on Windows. I’ve hit and surpassed a lot of roadblocks the last 2 weeks, on native and cross compiled builds, but nobody seems to want to drop coin on the effort so far, even though having Windows full nodes would greatly increase potential adoption of zcash, and wildly increase its value to miners. I need to get that message out to miners and zcash investors better, I think. @zooko When you do make Windows support a priority for zcashco staff, I have a wealth of knowledge about roadblocks and gotchas, but I’m totally unfunded at this point. ---
**Author:** ![Enoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/57b2e6/32.png) [@Enoch](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Enoch)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/17 "2016-10-20T20:06:09Z")
I think an intermediate step may be to port only the standalone miner (or the future opensource gpu miners) on windows and on the same machine the zcash node running on a vbox. ---
**Author:** ![zooko](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/zooko/32/32232_2.png) [@zooko](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/zooko)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 9:18pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/18 "2016-10-20T21:18:08Z")
I’m so sorry to hear that, @anon47418038! Thank you so much for doing all that work on a volunteer basis and contributing it to the community. I’m sure there are people out there who will benefit from your work and be grateful to you, even they don’t know it yet. I’m not sure that the Zcash Co is _ever_ going to get around to making an officially-supported Windows build. We’ll have to reconsider this after launch, when we’re taking stock of our finances and priorities… ---
**Author:** ![anon47418038](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@anon47418038](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/anon47418038)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 9:32pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/19 "2016-10-20T21:32:34Z")
Right now I just need a BTC or 2 a week to 1AsoFtYfV2mCpCS98Qf3ytKs8y9VSzZ4V5 to keep my whole household chugging along…this entire year zcash is the only thing that has excited me, so I’m doing that and trying to get crowdfunding as an independent dev for my work going, on Windows builds and otherwise, rather than look for yet another soul-sucking corporate gig. 20 years working on closed source software for other people’s VC funded startups has left me burned out on having a traditional job. I’ve been captivated by the prospect of anonymous digital cash since reading Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx books as a kid, and I’ve known you and Daira online since the early 2000’s from the cap-talk and metz-dowd cryptography lists, so this is a cryptocurrency team I trust. And I know that open source projects with a corporate “parent” benefit strongly from independent developers being involved: because while I trust @zooko not to tell his employees to do anything messed up, who knows what things at zcashco will be like in 5, 10 or more years. And as we’ve seen with various cryptography/surveillance related scandals in recent years, the fact that employees must perform “any lawful act” that a supervisor directs them to or be fireable for insubordination (in the US), combined with the ubiquity of NDA’s, makes having trusted outside developers involved in a project such as this very important. So that’s what I’m angling to do. I’ve got about 1 month of runway left to get funding or a job. It looks like my PR for removing the last known inderminacy for gitian builds, which I found and patched yesterday, was just accepted and is being run through its paces by zkbot. So again, BTC to 1AsoFtYfV2mCpCS98Qf3ytKs8y9VSzZ4V5 or fiat to [PayPal.Me](https://paypal.me/MercerWeiss) (the latter is preferred, as I can pay my rent directly that way without jumping through tons of KYC hoops). ---
**Author:** ![anon47418038](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@anon47418038](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/anon47418038)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194/20 "2016-10-20T21:35:09Z")
I’m going to be writing a detailed post on the status of my Windows ports, both native builds and cross-compiled from linux, later today for the forum. Needless to say, they each have their own unique challenges. [Next page](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/building-zcash-on-windows/194.md?page=2)