I had problems with the windows version as well. I think the binary version is a old version. It says last year, hardfork 19 was released the other week. I suggest doing a fresh build of the steemd.exe . Mining Steem for Dummies helped me build a working version. And if your on windows and want to use ubuntu (windows 10 has it in the system) but you can download a software that will create a virtual machine in your computer so you can use windows while running the VM. go to vmware.com also go to youtube and look how to setup vmware workstation 12. It took me 3 hours to have my steemd up and running, But the syncing takes hours as it has to sink before it can start mining. Also seed-node addresses are on this webpage which you will need for both the config file and when your building steemd miner. hope that helps.