How to start mining Decred?

Here are are talking about PoW mining.

For Stake mining guide go here.

Prerequisites i.e. Things you should have ready to use this guide:

1. Your airdrop seed you saved when confirming your airdrop registration. If you didn't register for airdrop just ignore this.
2. Already created username & passwords for dcrd & dcrwallet, both should be different for maximum security.
3. Already created public & private passphrase for wallet, both should be different for maximum security.
4. Mainnet binaries & key/password to unzip it. You will need 7zip (for windows) or p7zip (for linux) software to unzip this file.
5. Latest version of cgminer.
6. Register on a pool if you don't want to do solo mining & create workers.

Running Daemon i.e. dcrd.exe

1. Extract the mainnet binaries. Goto the folder where you extracted the binaries.
   
2. Open a command window in folder.
3. enter following command:


4. This will start the daemon & it will start syncing the mainnet blockchain.

Importing the Airdrop seed & Creating an address for solo mining

1. open a new command window in folder where you extracted mainnet binaries. Enter this command in the command window
2. Command window will ask you to input a wallet passphrase. Enter a passphrase you created as prerquisite for dcrwallet & Press enter. Note: While entering the passphrase, command window will show no activity but it is accepting your input.
   
3. Confirm your passphrase by typing it again & press enter
   
4. Now it will ask you for a passphrase for public data. Choose yes, and enter the public passphrase you created as prerequisite. Remember this passphrase as you will need it for staking in the future.
   
5. Note: Make sure you enter your seed with only spaces (no line breaks). Total of 32 space-separated words. Also seed is case sensitive. If you want to verify a seed, use "verify.bat" included with dcraddrgen utility you used to create your airdrop address.
6. It will now ask if you have existing wallet seed.
   Choose Yes (If you have a AirDrop wallet seed). Now is the time to get your airdrop seed, the one that you saved when you confirmed your airdrop registration. Enter your seed with only spaces (no line breaks). Now press enter only when you have typed the whole seed.
   Choose No. (If you dont have AirDrop wallet seed. Then just continue to follow the prompts. 
7. Congrats! You have now imported your airdrop hopefully.
   Or, have generated a new wallet!!
8. Now run your wallet using following command:


9. Skip following steps if you don't need a new address for mining or already created one.
10. This will start the wallet & connect it to daemon so that wallet becomes upto date.
    
11. Now that wallet is running & connected to daemon.
    
12. Open a new command window & run :


13. Copy the address shown, you will need it for solo mining.

Creating new wallet & address if you missed the Airdrop

1. open a new command window in folder where you extracted mainnet binaries. Enter this command in the command window
   
• Command window will ask you to input a wallet passphrase. Enter a passphrase of your choice & Press enter. Note: While entering the passphrase, command window will show no activity but it is accepting your input.
  
• Confirm your passphrase by typing it again & press enter
  
• Now it will ask you for a passphrase for public data. Choose yes, and enter the public passphrase you created as prerequisite. Remember/store this passphrase as you will need it for staking in the future.
  
• It will now ask if you have existing wallet seed. As this is your first wallet, choose no.
  
• This will create a wallet file save your seed in a safe place and type OK.
   
2. After that enter this command:


3. This will start the wallet & connect it to daemon so that wallet becomes upto date.
   
4. Now that wallet is running & connected to daemon.
   
   
5. Open a new command window & run:
   
6. Copy the address shown, you will need it for solo mining.

Check screenshots of the steps till now: https://imgur.com/a/CaJ4M

Mining Solo

1. Now goto command window running daemon that we started in step1 of "Running Daemon" & press ctrl+c. This will stop the daemon.
   
   
2. Restart the daemon with following command. (you can use the same command window) :


3. Now that both wallet and daemon are running & synced, its time to mine.
   
4. Unzip cgminer. You will find start_local.bat file in the unzipped folder.
5. Open it using a text editor & change -u & -p to your username & password used with daemon. Also change the port to 9109 instead of 19109 Save it.
   
6. IMPORTANT: change http to https
7. Run start_local.bat and your gpus will start solo mining.

Mining on the pool

1. Follow Mining solo guide until step 4.
2. After that open start_local.bat in a text editor.

• For MaxMiners pool, use:

         Diff 1: http://dcr.maxminers.net:7727
         Diff 4: http://dcr.maxminers.net:7728

• For suprnova pool, use:

           Diff 1: http://dcr.suprnova.cc:9110
           Diff 4: http://dcr.suprnova.cc:9111
           Diff 8: http://dcr.suprnova.cc:9112
           Diff 64: http://dcr.suprnova.cc:9115

• For multicoin.co pool, use:

• For Pool.mn pool,  use:

• For coinmine.pl pool.  use:

• Here "webloginID" is your username you chose on the pool while creating your account. You can click the name of a pool above to see their Getting started Guide.
  Create your workers. workername & workerpassword are explained there.
  
  Try the high-diff port if you're having lots of rejects.

Thanks @sambiohazard for the help!