Even with the new config file by sonarous, (and a witness name in quotes, and miner name and key)
seed-node = seed.steemed.net:2001
witness = "itseasytryit"
miner = ["itseasytryit","5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"]
mining-threads = 2
it still just crashes on the witness line with this error.
2792457ms th_a witness.cpp:98 plugin_initialize ] _witnesses: ["itseasytryit"]

The cli wallet also crashes immediately with this error:
3250045ms th_a main.cpp:154 main ] wdata.ws_server: ws://localhost:8090
0 exception: unspecified Underlying Transport Error
{"message":"Underlying Transport Error"} asio websocket.cpp:439 operator()
{"uri":"ws://localhost:8090"} th_a websocket.cpp:668 connect
The windows event viewer error says this for every crash (no matter what drive or freshly unpacked files used:
Windows cannot access the file for one of the following reasons: there is a problem with the network connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers installed on this computer; or the disk is missing. Windows closed the program steemd.exe because of this error.

I must be missing some required tools or something.
Has anyone tried it on a fresh windows 7 install? Does this require C++ or some coding tools to be installed?