Bitcoin Forum

I have a wallet.dat which I registered in 2011-2012 where I have 150 BTC 1 and now I'm trying to sing in there with bitcoin-core/electrum but it doesn't work (bitcoin core 0.17.1 says "wallet.dat corrupt. Salvage failed" and electrum says "utf8 codec can't decode byte 0xf5 in position 60; invalid start byte")

I tried pywallet but it returned an error "Couldn't open wallet.dat/main. Try quitting Bitcoin..."

It's not password encrypted.

What should I do? Are there any chances to return my money?

There are chances for you getting the Money back when its done properly according to this article. Kindly follow the steps on the link and i hope it will help: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/59699/opening-an-old-wallet-dat
If it doesn't, keep on refreshing the thread for more replies to your question.
http://archive.is/GfYED

Try moving the topic to Technical Support board for better response on this question.

Seems like your old wallet has been badly corrupted and you need to try using the -salvagewallet command in the bitcoin core to restore your coins safely. I am suggesting this idea to you only on the sense since the pywallet recorvery didn't help you in restoring the private keys. The -salvagewallet command could be quite dangerous and can corrupt your wallet.dat file if they are clean and non-corrupted. Hence I recommend you to have a copy of your wallet.dat file before you proceed further with using this command.

-salvagewallet command is used for recovering only the private keys associated with the wallet provided that only the wallet.dat file is corrupted. If the private and public key pairs are corrupted, you would face a hard time in retrieving the keys.

Also, I have never used -salvagewallet command but I assume using that command will dump your private keys into a separate text file. Note that this will only help you retrieving your private keys, hence all the transactions associated and stored in the database file will be lost forever. Once, if you have successfully restored and got back your private keys, you can import them to Electrum or Bitcoin Core and get back your coins.

P.S Once the -salvagewallet is complete, check out your debug.log for further information.

I've only used Electrum and this has never happened to me but isn't it possible to recover the wallet even without the .dat file as long as you have the passphrase?

Not likely... A wallet.dat from 2011-2012 is probably generated by bitcoin core. Electrum was first released in 2011, but since core was the dominant wallet at that time, and wallet.dat is the default filename of a wallet generated by bitcoin core, it's probably a bitcoin core wallet.
At that time, bitcoin core was not an HD wallet, each time you funded an address, a new random private key was generated and saved in the wallet.dat, no seed phrase, no xprv, just random private keys stored in a wallet file.

@OP: did you make a backup copy, as suggested by a previous poster?

If so, i'd probably recommand you to re-try pywallet, but maybe fetch an older release from around the time you created the wallet? A different option might be to download an older bitcoin core version, install it on an OFFLINE pc and dump your private keys?

@OP since the amount of bitcoins you are trying to recover is very big you could get approached by scammers who will PM you and might ask you to send them your wallet.dat with promises they will get your bitcoins back to you. DON'T DO THAT!
Make sure you know who you are talking to. Since you are new here, check the trust rating of the individuals who contact you. Click on their name to open up their profile and towards the bottom you will see Trust. Click on that and read the Trusted/Untrusted feedback (if there is any).

As mocacinno suggestion, I want to add this link below to install the old version of bitcoin core and it might solve your issue.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases?after=v0.3.22rc4

I have some experience in my old wallet before where my wallet.dat is corrupted but I'm sure it's not damaged but when I open the file into hex tool the lower part shows all 0 until the end of the file. So the file is totally damaged or corrupted.

If you have a hex editor you can check if your backup wallet.dat is corrupted or not. Also, you can check it in notepad++ and maybe you can find something like private keys, master public key or any text that can help recover your wallet inside wallet.dat.