Bitcoin Forum

Hey there,

So basically, some years ago (about 2013 or so) i had some bitcoins stored on my desktop wallet of my old pc, now its broken, so i cant get over there anymore. However, i have saved some stuff about this wallet that might help restore it, i have a .dat file of my wallet, and an 18 words serial that apparently its called a seed. Ive been doing some research on internet when ive found this program called Electrum, and it said i would be able to restore everything downloading that program, and with my seed stored, however looks like a seed is a 12 words serial, and mines an 18 words serial, so i dont really know if this is a seed, or something else... About the .dat file, i havent find much about it on internet, so any information is useful at this point.
Any help is appreciated!

If you have a wallet.dat file, the 18 words serial is likely not a seed; Electrum doesn't have a seed unless you're looking at armory. Is any of the words in the serial English words?

Assuming that you have the wallet.dat, can you install Bitcoin Core, go to %appdata%/Bitcoin and paste the wallet.dat inside of the directory?

Yes those 18 words are all in english, anyways im going to try download Bitcoin Core and drag it into that folder, ill let u know the result

18 words could be a BIP39 seed. I know that MultiBit HD offered 12, 18 and 24 word seeds.

When you put the seed into Electrum, click the "Options" button and tick the "BIP39 Seed" box.

After that, I would try the default "Derivation Path" first of m/44'/0'/0'... If that doesn't show any transactions, try again but use the MultiBit HD derivation path of m/0'

In recovering your bitcoin wallet, you need a backup PDF  when you created your wallet. There are steps in revovering go to Bitgo Recovery Tool and yoe will see their a screen pop. You need to follow all required detail to restore your bitcoin wallet. You need a password and QR code to do so. After all information you entered it will need to enter new bitcoin address and done your bitcoin wallet will be transfered to your new address.

One more thing I forgot to add... Check if your 18 English words can all be found in this list: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

If they can, it is in all likelihood a BIP39 seed.

You can recover your btc using electrum wallet. You should download the electrum wallet in your desktop and install the wallet. While installing it will ask for your seed words. In electrum wallet, its not called seed words. I forgot whats that. There you need to enter your seed words. That's it. you will be able to recover your wallet.

You can recover your wallet using Electrum if you are using latest version of Electrum (v2.9.3)

When you create a new wallet in Electrum, use the "I already have a seed" option, click the "Options" button, tick the "BIP39 seed" option, enter your  seed of the previous wallet, and when prompted, set the "Derivation Path" to m/0'
Note that the apostrophe IS important... it MUST be m/0'. That's it you are done .
You will be able regenerate your old wallet in this way.

Hope this will help you.

Could you tell us which wallet you used when you generate the 18 word key?

I think you should once try electrum ,have you tried that electrum seed has a manual option and words can be added after 12 of their words.
That means may be when you created that wallet on 2013 you have added the extra words by yourself.