Bitcoin Forum

My computer crashed. I was able to retrieve the wallet.dat file but it shows a balance of 0 but I had about $2000 there. I re-scanned and re indexed but nothing. I am copying pasting wallet.dat in bitcoin folder. Please help. I am desperate. Wallet has fully synced.

First just store your wallet.dat file from your corrupt bitcoin core. If you're on Windows, it's installed by default in the AppData folder. I recommend saving the full data folder from the old installation.

After you've backed up everything, do a fresh re-install. Let the new installation finish syncing, then import your wallet using "importwallet" command in the bitcoin core console.

Probably you have the different wallet.dat not the same where your balance is, restore from previous point where you still have accessed to your original wallet.dat, I hope you know how to restore from previous point in windows.

But if you are using linux that's a different problem that needs a different solution you need to explain every details how the computer crashed and what OS you were using so we can help you.

are you sure you copied correct dat file? you may stored correct one in different location?

Either you should have copied the wrong wallet.dat file as others said or you should have done something wrong while importing the file to sync with the newer version of the core wallet. If you have messed up with the wrong wallet.dat then you have lost your btc probably. If you are aware of the addresses which holds your money, try checking out in a block explorer so that you should make sure you haven't lost them forever.

If you have the same wallet.dat from the corrupted computer that still holds $2000, then after installing a newer version of OS and qt client try this to retrieve your coins

1. Download a newer version of core
2. Run the wallet software
3. Once it starts running, close it
4. The client should have created AppData folder in your Roaming folder
5. Replace only wallet.dat file with your older file

Since the wallet.dat is not a human readable file, you should export your private keys if you are willing to create a paper wallet

6. Restart the core, go to the console and type


This will export the keys associated with the wallet.

7. Allow them to sync if you are gonna use core

Note that, you should close the client and replace the wallet.dat file with the older file. That's how it should be done as far as I have read.

There might be a chance that your wallet.dat could have crashed along with your computer. If so, try having a copy of the wallet.dat and replace them and run the -salvagewallet command. This command will help you in recovering the private keys associated with the wallet. Running this command is quite risky since there are chances that this will corrupt your wallet.dat file even more. Hence try this command when you don't have any other choice of recovering them. Also save a copy of .dat file prior trying this out.

While solving all that technicality, you might also check out the address itself on a block explorer, just to confirm that there is indeed, a wallet there sitting with $2k. If you don't recall the address, you should check with the source (did you buy it from an exchange? maybe from localbitcoins? Mine it?). Get the tx ID and you should be able to locate the address receiving.

Hi, how to I access the bitcoin core console?

Click "Help" then select "Debug Window" and there will be a "Console" in the tab list, Click it.

How do I access the console?

You sure about the crush? It may be hacked, the hacker must've stole your funds. Check transactions in your wallet.

He would have already described it as a hack rather than a crash. Tell me how can a hacker specifically crash a PC? Because crashed PCs can't be hacked as they are not on, and hacker needs remote access even to get into that PC when it's switched on.

Op, please tell us did the method(s) work for you?
I had same issue but I was unable to recover any of my older files, a crash in which I lost 0.5 BTC, I didn't try too hard afterwards because BTC wasn't even $1k (speaking about times when we were in 2016).