Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I had created about a year ago a wallet through my smartphone. I had to reset my phone and I didn't back up my wallet at that time. I still have the public address and potentially the private one and I also have the password.

What can I do to restore my wallet?

If you have the private key then you can recover it through any of the bitcoin clients. but if its only the public key and password then there is no chance to recover.

Download Bitcoin core and use the command to import a private key and try what you think is the private key. If it works you should have a new address in the wallet which you should see your funds in.

I downloaded the client but I don't see any option to import a private key, any particular place I should look in?

You should see "help" at the top, hover over that and select debug window, then select console. Then you type in the console, "importprivkey" then add a space, and paste in the private key. Go to the recieving addresses to verify whether it worked or not. Make sure your computer is safe, and that you have a safe environment before importing the private key. If there's a particularly large amount of Bitcoin in the address, I suggest importing on a offline computer.  

A client which doesn't require downloading the blockchain would be a preferable option, if you aren't planning on using Bitcoin core and downloading the whole blockchain.

Here are the details about private keys, as well as an example format: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key

    

An alternative (faster) option would be to download electrum standalone, then create a new wallet, recovering from private key instead of seed. That way, the OP wouldn't have to download the complete blockchain, and a rescan isn't needed when issueing an importprivkey cmd ;)

OP: never reveil your public key, however, it might be interesting for us if you'd tell us the first character of the private key AND the number of characters in your private key (nothing more, nothing less)

Edit: Well, I just tried it. It's not the private key. :( :( :(

Had 15 bitcoins on it.

Like i said in my previous post: if you tell us the first character of the presumed private key, and the number of characters, we can see if it's a private key in a different form (a private key can be shown in many different ways, and not every form can be imported into every client)

EDIT:
Alternatively, you can download the sourcecode of https://www.bitaddress.org and run it on an offline machine, then try your private key in the "wallet details"-tab. This tool does not support all formats, for example the Mini private key format isn't supported (AFAIK)

9 is the beginning for what I thought was the private private key

My public address and the password, those I am certain of but they won't be of any help apparently

Edit: 32 characters, sorry I can't reply fast enough cause my new account is restricted to a number of posts per minute.

Please, edit your post and remove everything but the first letter (you really, really, really don't want a big part of your private key floating around online), and please add the number of characters of your supposed private key, it'll help us to make an educated guess as to which information you might hold

Sorry about that. It's 32 characters in all. And 34 for my public address

Hmmm... I'm sorry to say, but a 32 character private key starting with a 9 doesn't sound like a commonly used format to me (i can be mistaking tough)... This doesn't mean that it's impossible that this is a private key, but AFAIK it's not a commonly used format, so "standard" wallets like bitcoin core, electrum, the (depreciated) multibit (HD), armory,... will probably not support importing it it.

I guess your best chance will be to try to install the wallet you had on your phone before (the one you used to backup/export/save/... the private key) and see if you can use that private key to restore your wallet on your phone.

I think it's a goner. Nonetheless, thank you for your help. I should have backed it up at the time...

Do you remember which client you used when you created that wallet?

this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet&hl=en

Since reformatting your phone, did you continue using the phone? And did you write much data to it?

There is a chance, albeit small that the wallet was not overwritten when you formatted your phone, you might be able to use a data recovery program (e.g Recuva) to retrieve the old wallet file.

For now, stop using the phone as the more you use it, the higher the chance it gets overwritten.

so,
i found usb with bitcoin backup,
try to sync with bitcoin core wallet
till 2015 it has 0,077 bitcoin and now is to slow ,
it is locked account
if somebody is interested to look it up
i will send you .dat file

It's best to open a new topic instead of using somebody else's topic to ask your question, especially if it's not the same question as originally asked in the OP.

As for your problem: you say "it is locked account". Do you mean the wallet.dat is encrypted? If so, do you know the password, or at least have a reasonably good idear what the password might be? I can pretty easily export the private keys of an unencrypted wallet.dat (or an encrypted one if you have the password), i can even make a short how-to in case you're intested?

I'd say casually. I don't do something crazy with my phone. Phone calls and surfing on the web when need be & listen to music. That's about it I think.

Thank you for the info! How would I proceed to use Recuva on my phone?

You could just take the SD card out of the phone, and use Recuva on your computer to try and recover the files. This will likely be quicker as recovery processes with a deep scan can take hours depending on the side of the card. Just make sure you demount the card properly to avoid corruption and give the best chance of recovering any files which may be on there.

I've managed to recover fairly old files that were stored on a phone which was constantly being used, although not all the files were recovered a large enough portion of them were. It's surprising how much data you can save even if you have used the hard drive since the data has been lost.

I succeeded to make it work on my SD card but not on my internal storage. When I choose the internal storage option on Android, the drive doesn't appear on Recuva. Whereas if I choose mass storage (only external) it appears.

I'm trying to recover the SD card first because I'm not entirely sure whether the backup was saved on internal or SD.

Edit: not on the SD card. Checked all the files. Now how do I get it to recognize my internal slot?

https://imgur.com/a/5nB8M

You'll need to enable mass storage on the device, this should be available in settings if you're using android. I'm not sure if it's possible on iOS.

Mass storage mode (MSC) is only for the SD card. I've used it to recover deleted files on it. As for the internal card, I have to use debugging mode which I turned it on and use the "transfer files" (MTP) but the phone doesn't show up in Recuva for some reason

Try this;

https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/use-your-android-phone-as-wireless-flash-drive-for-windows-mac-0174599/

If that doesn't work, try fonepaw instead, this appears to be specifically designed for Android recovery.