Bitcoin Forum

Well, I stupidly didn't back up my wallet or my Mac. I downloaded the new version of Bitcoin-Qt and was trying to receive coins from coinapult. Unfortunately my computer died midway, and once I turned it on again and tried to open the client, I always got a "this application has quit unexpectedly" message. I tried redownloading the thing again and moved my data folder to my desktop. Got it to work, except all of my previous transactions and addresses aren't showing. It took almost two days to download the blockchain, and now that it's done, I see zero coins in my account. Is there a way to get these back??? I can't afford to lose them. I would really appreciat your help.

Hi, when I try to type this in, it says command not found. Is there something else I need to type in along with it?

If you don't see your addresses, then a rescan won't help.

In the data folder there should be a file named "wallet.dat".  This file likely has your old addresses (and more important the hidden private keys to those addresses).  Do not lose this file.  It would be a good idea to create a backup of it right away.

Shut down Bitcoin-Qt, then replace the wallet.dat that is currently in your data folder with the wallet.dat from the data folder on your desktop.  This may fix your problem immediately.

If you see your addresses, but not your bitcoins after replacing the wallet.dat, then you need to run the rescan.  If you still don't see your addresses, then you need to find a copy of the wallet.dat file that has your addresses (and private keys) somewhere on your computer.  If you've permanently lost this file, then you can consider your bitcoins permanently lost.

I tried this, and it says the file is corrupted and salvage failed? Is there anyway to remedy this issue?

Edit: The bitcoin client opened on the second try, but I still didn't have my addresses or previous transactions. Is there any way to find this file without using time machine??

There are some wallet recovery tools out there.  I'm not familiar with any of them (fortunately haven't had a need ofr them yet).  You might start by trying pywallet and seeing if you can extract your private keys with it (I'm not sure what's involved in getting pywallet to run on a Mac).  Otherwise you can wait and see if anyone with wallet recovery expertise stops in to this thread, or you can search the forum and see if you can find the threads about wallet recovery tools.