I also haven't been able to get mining to work so far. When I start mining via the command generate 14 -1 the QT Wallet uses 1 Thread but that's it. Unfortunately from that moment the debug console doesn't react to other commands anymore. Also I haven't found any command to stop mining.

I also had the problem, that I didn't have an address and also couldn't create one via the GUI. I could create one via the debug console with the command getnewaddress label. I had to set the label as the new address didn't show up without one.