Why does my miner show "job not found"?
“Job not found” usually means your miner sent work for a mining task that the pool no longer recognizes. An occasional message is often harmless, especially after a connection drops, but frequent messages mean some of your mining work may not count toward your rewards.
What the pool cannot find
A mining pool combines work from many miners and shares the rewards. It sends your miner a job: a set of instructions for the work to try, along with a job ID that identifies those instructions.
Your miner sends back shares, which are results that prove it is doing useful work. Each share includes the job ID it belongs to.
When the pool replies “job not found,” it cannot match that ID to a job it still accepts for your connection. This is different from saying your computer calculated the result incorrectly. The problem is usually which task the result belongs to, not the calculation itself.
Why a job can disappear
Several situations can leave your miner working on instructions the pool has stopped recognizing:
- Your connection restarted. Your miner may submit a result from the old connection after opening a new one. The pool may only recognize jobs assigned through the new connection.
- The pool replaced an older job. A new Monero block or another work update can make previous instructions outdated. Pools differ in how long they keep older jobs available.
- Your result arrived late. An unstable connection, a busy computer, or a delayed submission can cause the result to reach the pool after its job has expired.
- The pool restarted or changed servers. A maintenance event or connection-routing issue can leave your miner and the pool with different ideas about the current job.
Monero produces a block roughly every two minutes, but that does not mean every job expires on a fixed two-minute timer.
Why you may see it in a browser
Browser mining adds another place where delays can happen. Your browser may slow down a background tab or pause work when your device sleeps. When the page resumes, it can briefly try to send results tied to an older job.
Some browser miners also use a gateway, a server that passes messages between your browser and the mining pool. If that gateway reconnects but fails to discard old work correctly, you may see repeated “job not found” messages.
If the error mostly appears after switching tabs, waking your laptop, or changing Wi-Fi networks, that timing is a useful clue.
What you should check
Start with the pattern, rather than changing lots of settings:
- Look for accepted shares afterward. One error followed by normal accepted work usually needs no action.
- Restart the miner once. Stop it fully, then reconnect so it receives fresh instructions.
- Check connection stability. Compare the error times with sleep, network changes, or reconnect messages.
- Use the service’s current instructions. Check your pool address, port, and miner version where those settings are available.
- Contact support if it continues. Share timestamps and nearby log messages, but never share wallet recovery words or private keys.
Rejected shares generally do not count toward pool rewards. This error alone does not erase an existing balance or prove the service is a scam.
The bottom line
“Job not found” usually points to outdated work or a connection mismatch. Watch whether accepted shares resume; if errors keep repeating, investigate reconnects, browser pauses, and the pool or gateway rather than assuming your hardware is faulty.
