Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone. My Wallet.dat wants to be opened by VLC. Not sure why. I have some coins and my wallet saved on a thumbdrive. Last time i started it up I'm pretty sure the funds were in there. In fact. I deleted my wallet, set up a new one and it was like I hadn't deleted my first wallet. It had the transaction history and all. I just plugged that thumb n after a few months and naturally it took some time to catch up. It isn't seeing my coins tho. I cant import my wallet.dat. I have the file. Can someone explain what I should be doing?

What's your skype?

skype for what?

still the same problem. Can anyone expand on it for me at least. I had some coins in a folder on a thumb. Pretty much just got everything off my computer, stuck it on the thumbdrive and stashed it. In this folder is:

blkindex.dat
a database folder
db.log
debug.log
wallet.dat

I foolishly assumed when I got around to it I would open my bicoin client and it would know the path to my wallet file. It used to. I did an OS upgrade
but nothing else since a few months ago when it all sync 'd up fine.
The .dat files have defaulted to VLC.  I just want my bitcoin-qt to open the wallet.dat file. I didn't expect it to work but i tried opening the wallet.dat
file with my client.
Really not worth losing sleep over. Its a few coins. Just bugging the shit out of me.  

I am sure someone will go into greater detail, but from the sounds of it, your coins are safe.

Back up wallet.dat to removable media if you plan to tinker...

Copied? or moved?

In which folder?

No. the bitcoin client expects the wallet.dat to be in a specific path.  If you move it to a new path, the client won't be able to find it and instead will create a brand new wallet.dat in the path where it expected to find the old one.

How did you do this?


Then you need to make sure you still have the correct wallet.dat and that you are putting it in the correct path on your computer.

right. Ok i navigated to application support and found a bitcoin folder with a bunch of new files.
Some large 6 gb in there.
can someone explain how to point my client to ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/ on
OSX 10.6.8. I used to know this stuff but I dont have reasons to work in terminal that often
Forgot most of it

Your client should already be pointing to that path.  That is where you need to place the wallet.dat that you want to open.  There is probably already a wallet.dat there.  You'll need to move the existing wallet.dat out of the way, and then copy the wallet.dat from your thumb drive to that location.  Make sure that the client is completely shut down when you do that.  It doesn't like having the wallet.dat changed while it is running.  Then when you start the client back up, it should open/use the wallet.dat that you just placed there.

1)VLC think .dat files are file it can open, just ignore this.

2)No, you don't open files with the standard client. You have to put the wallet.dat in the right folder (appdata/bitcoin on Windows) and then start the client, it will then read it and show you the coins in it. (or add -datadir blablabla in a shortcut and set a different folder)

3)Don't use the standard client, it isn't exactly... meant for normal use... use a client like MultiBit, much better interface, it let you open a wallet file exactly like every other software on this planet, it doesn't have to synchronize and download the full blockchain...