Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,
I did an update for my ledger nano and wanted to claim btc cash.
update it self wasn't smooth. stuck on my windows 7 so i had to finish on macbook (recomended on ledger site).
When i was trying to recover wallet after typing 24 words it says invalid recovery phrase.
I know i didnt make mistake when i was writing down them, tripple checked :)
Now i remember on the screen before updating was something saying that update can take up to 24h.
anyone had something like that?
thanks

Any updates on the nano s usually don't take longer than 30 seconds. And no way they take up to 24 hours.
If it says invalid recovery phrase this means that at least one of your words is not in the BIP39 word list used to generate those seeds.
You could compare the BIP39 word list with the words you have written down (https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39 (https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39)).
If one from the words you have written down is not in this list you can try to replace it with similar looking words and try out if this works for you.

my one is just nano, old one.
all words are correct as i said i checked 3 times after i wrote them down.
is it possible restart wallet or back to old software?
also maybe i need to buy new nano s and do recovery on new one..
thanks for reply

You can theoretically install the old firmware again. But this won't get you any further since your seed still will shown as invalid.

Did you do what i recommended you to do?

Are all words in this list: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt) ?

If no: There you go, you misstyped 1 word
If yes: This probably won't be the case. If this really should be the case and ledger broke their old nano wallets with a new update or your device is somehow 'broken',
then you can throw your 24 word seed into a BIP39 mnemonic seed calculator (only do this offline!) and look up some addresses which have coins on it.
Afterwards just export those private keys and import them into a new wallet.

There are a couple of possible causes:

1. You have non BIP39 words written down in your 24 words.
2. You have BIP39 words, but in the wrong order.
3. You have the wrong BIP39 words.
4. The firmware is bad.

#1 is easy enough to check... do as bob123 suggested and make sure all your words are in the BIP39 wordlist (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt)

I've seen cases of #2 caused by someone filling the recovery sheet in the wrong order... it is two columns of 12 numbers, (ie. 1-12 and 13-24 going DOWN then across) like this:

1    13
2    14
3    15
4    16
5    17
6    18
7    19
8    20
9    21
10  22
11  23
12  24

... but some people write their seed as 12 rows of 2 (ie. going ACROSS then down) on the recovery sheet...

1    2
3    4
5    6
7    8
9    10
11  12
13  14
15  16
17  18
19  20
21  22
23  24

but the recovery sheet is still numbered in columns going down... so when they are asked to type it in, they get the words in the wrong order!! :-\

#3 is pretty common, as there are a LOT of very similar words in the word list... kid, kind, kit, kite, then, them etc. It can be VERY easy to get these mixed up. gurnec's seed recovery can help with this: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md

#4 would be relatively rare... one would assume Ledger would do quite thorough testing before releasing a new firmware to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Although, given that your update didn't go well... it is possible the firmware is corrupted in some way. Maybe try and redo the firmware update so that you can be sure there are no issues.

Hi HCP could you please help me to recover the last word of my recovery seed?
From word number 1-23 im pretty sure its in exactly order, that the word number 23 is last word. Im pretty sure. Right now i cant find a simple solution to check the position of the missing word and what the word was. Could you please help me to find the correct seed that have the address of my coin i will pay you.
Thank you very much , i hope you see his because i have been so desperate the past few days

You can use the btcrecover tool: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/ (https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/).
Or to be more precise the seedrecovery.py: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md (https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md)

This tool checks your seed for mistakes and tries to replace the wrong word.
The safest would be if you read yourself into installing/setting up the seedrecovery tool.
If you aren't able to set it up properly you should try to find a reputable(!) and honest person on this forum to do this for you for a small fee.

Pretty much exactly what I advised via PM ;)

Unfortunately, installing and setting up Python, while not overly complicated, isn't exactly a "point and click" operation...

I've found a short YouTube clip that demonstrates installing and configuring the system Path variable on Windows here: https://youtu.be/QYUBz4mrnFU

Following that should allow most people to get Python 2.7 installed (DON'T install Python 3!!) and setup with "pip"... On Windows 7 systems.

Note: It'll mostly work the same with Windows 10, just the "environment variable setup" is a bit different. Click "start", click "settings" icon (little cog icon just above start button) and then in the search box, type "environment"... It will show a link to "edit system environment variables"... Which brings up the same dialog box as shown in the video

Im not trying to replace incorrect words or anything. Its just this i have all 23 words right now in correct order. My problem is that i dont exactly know what the missing word is and its position inbetween from 1-23
Could you tell me is there anyone else that could help me with this, because im feeling so desperate for the past few days. Thank you very much

You could iterate the 'wrong-world-role' between those 24 positions, running the script 24 times.
Its just 24 times slower than the 'normal usage'.. its still doable (and pretty straight forward).

Sorry for my ingronant i dont understand most of what you were saying, sorry!
Could you please say it in simple english??
Is there any scripts that i can run to find the correct position as well as the word that have the address cointaned my coins??
Thanks

Like written earlier, this tool:
can check all possible words if you got 1 word wrong.

Now, since you have 23 words.. you could call that 23 correct words + 1 wrong word.
Now try to make 24 seeds with your 23 correct words and your 1 wrong word starting at position 1, moving always one to the right.
So your second seed to check has the wrong word in the 2nd position, your third seed in the 3rd position, and so on..

Afterwards you run the script mentionoed above on all 24 seeds. The script will replace the wrong word with all possible words (for each of your 24 possible missing word-positions).


As far as i know there is no script yet which does exactly this. But you can easily do this 'by hand' or write a small python script by yourself which
calls the recovery-script 24 time with different seeds. If you are not a 'friend of computer' at all:

Have been PMing the OP... I think the issue is going to be that he is using Ledger Nano S with ETH... if he is using the Ledger ETH Chrome app, then seedrecovery.py won't work as for some reason Ledger set their wallet up using a non-BIP44 compatible derivation path of m/44'/60'/0' (ETH BIP44 is m/44'/60'/0'/0') :-\

The select dialog for choosing your wallet type even says:

I believe it SHOULD be possible to modify the code to add an option to work with Ledger... and my initial tests seem to be OK... just need to discuss with OP

 

Youre awesome!!!! Becuase my wallet was created on a ledger nano s and then i used myetherwallet to receive ethereum from bittrex. When i plugged in the nano on myetherwallet after typed in the pin code on my ledger it pops up the box showing 4 addresses that i can choose to send ethereum to. The very first address have all my coins and the derivation path always be Ledger (ETH) m/44’/60’/0’
Hope that after you have rescripted the codes for it to find my wallet i will be a happy person again.
Thank you very much in advance HCP!!  Youre the man!!

Sorry but Really am not a friend of computer for sure. Well not at all but only with python and script thing. But i can install and run it if you could make it simple otherwise writing the script to do the word of finding the missing word is like slapping on my face because i really dont know much about it , sorry!
My only hope now that HCP will help me to edit the scripts and make it work with my current sittuation. And hope that it will comes handy with other people in the future if they have accidently deleted a word out of their recover seed

similar problem. Ledger Nano S reset during firmware update and now trying to recover my ledger, but the 24 word passphrase is not working. i have all 24 words but seems like one or two words is not correct. all i have is the one ethereum wallet address i used when connecting my ledger to myetherwallet. i have setup and ran the python seed recovery script as suggested, but if i select myetherwallet and input my address and recovery phrase it does not find a seed (ran multiple times). if i select the ledger option i get a keyerror: '0' and cannot get it the script to take my 24 words to see if it can find the incorrect word in the phrase. fairly stumped at the moment

Maybe is problem in your firmware,do you try to make update again?Although it is a great probability that you have some words wrong written,so check every word letter by letter.If for example you have word affair and you write down afair it's a mistake.Take some time and read HCP post number 5, and also check every word with help of this BIP39WordList (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt)

checked all of the words, the lists, etc. trying to run the seedrecovery script in python with no luck, my main question is the fact do i need to run the seedrecovery as the ledger option or myetherwallet option. because the public wallet address i have is an ethereum wallet address, but that address seems to error out when i select ledger as my wallet

All of the words are correct words from the BIP39 wordlist?
Did you also check the order of those words (rows/columns)?




If you used the 'first' derived ETH address (which is the only address shown in the native ETH app), you should choose ledger.




Did you run a script which needs a BTC address maybe? Or what exactly is the error message you get?

I BELIEVE ITS LOOKING FOR A BTC WALLET

Starting seedrecover 0.7.3, btcrecover 0.17.10 on Python 2.7.14 64-bit, 16-bit unicodes, 32-bit ints
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\RicHome\Downloads\btcrecover-master\btcrecover-master\seedrecover.py", line 37, in <module>
    mnemonic_sentence = btcrseed.main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "C:\Users\RicHome\Downloads\btcrecover-master\btcrecover-master\btcrecover\btcrseed.py", line 1781, in main
    loaded_wallet = wallet_type.create_from_params(**create_from_params)
  File "C:\Users\RicHome\Downloads\btcrecover-master\btcrecover-master\btcrecover\btcrseed.py", line 661, in create_from_params
    self._known_hash160s = self._addresses_to_hash160s(addresses)
  File "C:\Users\RicHome\Downloads\btcrecover-master\btcrecover-master\btcrecover\btcrseed.py", line 208, in _addresses_to_hash160s
    hash160, version_byte = base58check_to_hash160(address)
  File "C:\Users\RicHome\Downloads\btcrecover-master\btcrecover-master\btcrecover\btcrseed.py", line 122, in base58check_to_hash160
    decoded_bytes = base58check_to_bytes(base58_rep, 1 + 20)
  File "C:\Users\RicHome\Downloads\btcrecover-master\btcrecover-master\btcrecover\btcrseed.py", line 100, in base58check_to_bytes
    int_rep += base58_digit_to_dec[base58_digit]
KeyError: '0'
Press Enter to exit ...

Yes, currently... btcrecover only works with Ledger BITCOIN addresses... You'll notice on the Ethereum option that it says "...NOT ledger"

The reason it doesn't work is that for whatever reason Ledger uses a different (non BIP44) derivation path for ETH, which makes it generate different addresses from other ETH wallets when using the same seed mnemonic... I put a pull request in to btcrecover GitHub about this months ago:

Your options are:

1. Download my version of btcrseed.py from GitHub and use that... It'll give you an extra "Ethereum Ledger" option when selecting the wallet type...

Or

2. Modify the existing btcrseed.py and change the derivation path on line 1306 from:

To

Note that if you just change the one line of code... It'll break recovery for other ETH wallets like Jaxx, Exodus, Metamask, TREZOR etc.

Instead of manually changing the code you can just run special commands from the command line instead like this:

I've helped several people recover bitcoin and altcoins both through full trust where they give me their seed etc. and also just by helping walk people through using different tools like btcrecover. If you need any help let me know.

All my contact information as well as several references can be seen on my website at www.grnqrtr.com

Good to know that it supports custom derivation paths from the command line! Thanks for the heads-up...

I still don't know why Chris hasn't just added the Ledger option to the GUI version tho... It's a pretty simple mod and enables those with a command line phobia easy access

Right guys. I still cant access my bitcoins..
I bought new nano s coz i thought maybe old ledger broke down. But new one says the same invalid recovery phrase.
I know all 24 words are correct (wrote them very slowly) also checked them on BIP39.
just thinking maybe i mix numbers like 5-6 or smth.

I will give 0.5 BCH if someone will help me to sort this out.
Thanks

You best chance is to read post 5&8 in this thread and try to recover your seed with posted tools or with method of attempts and mistakes.As you say that maybe you mix some words and not write them in the proper order,so try to switch word 5 with 6 if you have any doubt that this is a problem.

If we assume that these words are correct,but that is incorrect order then try to use that tools to maybe fix your seed,or download Electrum and start to play with words.I say Electrum because it is much easier to enter words there then type it in Ledger.

Did you try using the seedrecover.py script that comes as part of btcrecover? If you are fairly confident you maybe have one incorrect word or just got two words swapped... and you know at least one of the addresses from that seed, then the script will find your correct seed easily.

Read here: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md

Install Python, download the btcrecover package and then run seedrecover.py as per the instructions... it works.

No i didn't use. I'm not confident with my skills to do that :)
Do you mean one of the bitcoin address for this wallet? Yes i can find it.
Thanks

If you're not confident installing or using Python, then it is going to be difficult to recover your seed. Your only other option would be to trust someone with your seed and get them to recover it for you... obviously this is a "Bad Idea"™ unless you REALLY trust that person, as once they recovered your correct seed, they would have full access to your wallet!

If you need help getting Python installed... I'm sure myself and/or others here will be able to help walk you through it. It really isn't THAT difficult... and the seedrecover.py script is actually a GUI based recovery tool (it has pretty windows! :))

What operating system are you using? Windows? If so... go here and get Python 2.7.14: https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-2714/

The 64bit version is labelled as "Windows x86-64 MSI installer"
The 32bit version is labelled as "Windows x86 MSI installer"

There are also versions for MacOSX on that page if you're using that operating system.


Yes, you need one of the bitcoin addresses generated by your seed... preferably one of the first addresses generated, as it helps speed up the process (script only has to generate a few addresses to check instead of hundreds etc)

I've used Seed Recover before - it is very straightforward to use, and there are easy to follow steps available on Seed Recover Github that HCP posted already: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md (https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md). Installing and using Python isn't that difficult, even for a technical newbie.

I would suggest following the instructions given and at least giving it a go yourself. If you absolutely can't use it, then your only option is going to be to trust someone else to do it for you.

Thanks for info, I'll try

all sorted! huge thanks to HCP!

What is the result? Did you restore it?

Yes, I walked the OP through the process of using the "seedrecover" script that comes with btcrecover to find the error in the recovery phrase that the user had written down.

Was relatively straight forward and simple.

This info worked like a charm. Thank you.