Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: asciicat on November 18, 2013, 08:02:45 PM



Title: Need help getting private keys from a corrupted wallet
Post by: asciicat on November 18, 2013, 08:02:45 PM
So, a year+ ago, I reformated my computer and the one thing I forgot to backup was my bitcoins. After I reinstalled windows I remembered "MY BITCOINS!". I held power and turned my comp off, booted into a separate hard drive, and used a recovery program (recuva) to get the wallet.dat file.

But of course, when I ran bitcoin with the recovered wallet, it failed instantly on startup. "wallet corrupt - salvage failed"

Here's what happens with pywallet:
Code:
<~/Documents/Backup/bitcoins>python pywallet.py wallet.dat --dumpwallet
'ecdsa' package is not installed, pywallet won't be able to sign/verify messages
ERROR:root:Couldn't open wallet.dat/main. Try quitting Bitcoin and running this again.
Here's what happens with bitcointools:
Code:
<~/Documents/Backup/bitcoins/bitcointools>python dbdump.py --wallet
ERROR:root:Couldn't open wallet.dat/main. Try quitting Bitcoin and running this again.

Bitcoin is not running - I just restarted my computer.

I am offering a bounty to anyone who can help me recover these.

Thanks in advance.


Title: Re: Need help getting private keys from a corrupted wallet
Post by: Ecurb123 on November 26, 2013, 09:59:48 PM
Maybe you can create a new wallet.dat, open it up in a text editor and look at it side by side with you corrupted one and see if there is something that stands out. I have no experience with wallet.dat files other than using them so I have no idea if that advice will help or not.


Title: Re: Need help getting private keys from a corrupted wallet
Post by: deepceleron on November 26, 2013, 10:31:13 PM
Nearly identical thread:

The second that you say the word "format" or "repartition", the only hope is to yank the drive from service and scan the whole surface for any recoverable private keys. Data likely will no longer be where it should be, recovery software will find junk in the sectors where "wallet.dat" is indicated to have been.

A year+ ago you formatted your drive.

You "recovered" a wallet a year ago, without looking to see if it even has correct data in it?

Slim to none would be the odds I place on recover.