I posted the post below in the Newbies forum but I think it would be better suited for the Mining forum and would like to post it there:
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"Hi,
I've read a lot about Bitcoin and have decided to try solo mining. I realize that it's a bit like playing the lottery now - probably not economical to do so, usually - but operational costs are not a concern for me at this time. However, I have run into problems with the bitcoin official client, bitcoin-qt.exe: after two unintended shutdowns, I got the error with the blkindex.dat file. I know I can clear appdata and reinstall it, but that requires spending hours downloading the blocks all over again each time, and I suspect further shutdowns may occur so it'll be quite a pain having to re-do it each time. I'm using guiminer and it seems to require this particular client for solo mining. Is there any other client with faster load times and/or a different miner I can try? Is it possible to solo mine with a light client, or no client at all?

Thank you."