Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I started this thread here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5297530.msg55794505

And have managed to follow those instructions as per below.

I've got a 2013 wallet on an old PC. Around that time I joined BTC guild and did a little mining. I cannot remember how long I did it for. I'm also not sure if the satoshi went to the wallet.dat file or into the guild under my username.

The old PC is not working properly, so I copied the wallet.dat to a new PC. Downloaded BitcoinCore, updated the blockchain, and then copied the wallet.dat into the bitcoin wallet folders.

When I try to view the wallet after it says Loading blocks
I get this error, then it shuts down.
http://prntscr.com/vznvx8

What should I do?

Thanks

Do exactly what the error messages tells you to do.. Start core with the -reindex parameter.
This will result in the blockchain being synced again which (since you are running a pruned node) will download the blockchain again (as mentioned in the message from your screenshot).

Unfortunately you did this in the wrong order to use a pruned blockchain. If you start by coping wallet.dat, it gets updated while downloading (and pruning) the blockchain.

If you get it to work, and after you've securely stored your Bitcoins in a different wallet, you'll own just over $400 in Forkcoins for every Bitcoin you had in 2013. It may be a nice little treasure hunt but don't do it before securing your Bitcoin.

Thanks for that advice.

I don't know where the private key is at this stage. But I'm trying to avoid the process of hunting for it unless I can verify there is some coins in the wallet first. Is there a way I can extract the public key from the wallet?

It took nearly 4 days to download the blockchain, hoping to avoid that again.

Here is debug.log
https://drive.google.com/file/d/113BVQbFT3yZQE3EM4LEYAOjYDL5ZOdXB/view?usp=sharing

1. Open bitcoin-qt
2. Open debug console, help->about->console
3. type in "dumpwallet <filename>"
4. if above command is invalid try with "dumpprivkey "

well you have a treasure there

Thanks a bunch for the info. So are you saying I have something? Is that because the debug.log mentions some coins at the end of it?

I've pointed the console to the original wallet.dat file (because it gets changed/enlarged in the default wallet location). So that is the original 80kb wallet file:

00:28:28

dumpwallet "C:\Users\PETER\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\wallets\pc dec 12 wallet\walletpc2.dat"


00:28:28

C:\Users\PETER\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\wallets\pc dec 12 wallet\walletpc2.dat already exists. If you are sure this is what you want, move it out of the way first (code -8)


00:29:34

dumpprivkey "C:\Users\PETER\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\wallets\pc dec 12 wallet\walletpc2.dat"


00:29:37

Invalid Bitcoin address (code -5)

I think he can't be able to go on the debug console while he still getting this "error: prune" when using bitcoin core.

What he needs to do is to disable the prune mode just to get rid of the error before he can be able to go to the debug console.

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@BitCoinSeo

Look for bitcoin.conf and edit with notepad and then find the "prune=" remove that thing and restart the core.
After that, do what BITDV suggests.

You can find the bitcoin.conf under this

The help here is really great thanks.

The bitcoin.conf file doesn't exist. But I had a look in the apps settings;
There is a "prune block storage" setting?
http://prntscr.com/w0lz64

Otherwise I can go to advanced settings config and it will create that file by the looks (but it opens empty). 

If I can find some coins out of this, I'm going to change my username to Charlieandthechocolatefactory, I really need some chocolate about now :-[

Uncheck that and it'll disable pruning. The client will redownload all the blocks from the start and synchronize again. You'll thus be downloading about ~350GB worth of data as well as it's equivalent disk space.

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I would actually recommend you to use bitcoin-cli if you don't want to resynchronize again. That'll require certain level of technical competency and I think reindexing the blockchain would be less cumbersome.

I don't suppose there is any easier way? It takes days to download it all again.

If you can access the bitcoin core without the error try to go to the receiving tab or file>receiving address then copy all addresses.

After that paste all addresses on this tool http://www.homebitcoin.com/easybalance/
Just to check if what addresses have funds.

But if none of them have BTC then it's not worth to dump all of your private keys. But if it shows some address with balances you can export them and just do the guide suggested by BITDV.
If you can't find the console from the BITDV suggestion you can also find it on the windows menu look at the image below.

https://coinguides.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/bitcoin-console.png

Then use this command:


After you dump all private keys you can import all private keys with Electrum it doesn't need to download the whole blockchain unlike Bitcoin core.

Unfortunately the Recieve address is totally empty. If I can get the address I'll use the tool though Thanks Maxz.

If I had done it differently at the beginning, by replacing the wallet.dat default file with my old one, before launching the BitcoinCore and indexing, would it have worked properly? Maybe it's better I uninstall,reinstall, and do that step?

When the index updates the blockchain, once it gets to the time period that any coins came in, around 2013, will the wallet balance then show up in Bitcoincore? So if there's anything in there I would know at least in the early days?

There's nothing easier than just waiting a few days ;) And it's also the most secure, I don't recommend messing around with private keys if you're not sure what you're doing.

From your screenshot: you use 450 MB database cache. If you have enough RAM, increasing this might improve the time it takes to synchronize the entire blockchain. If you have 16 GB RAM, try for instance 4096 MB dbcache.

I might just try that. If I do, should I do it this way?


Last time I did this, I had to restart it after the first day because it crashed.

That's what I would do :) But you have moved the wallet.dat already now, so all you need to do is restart syncing.

One thing I don't quite understand, I have a wallet but can't view my public key/receiving address at all, without downloading the entire history of the blockchain... If I had that info, I could just punch that into here? http://www.homebitcoin.com/easybalance/

You can extract all the private keys and addresses. Being able to and be able to handle and spend them depends on your technical competency and that's something that I don't think you should risk and frankly it could be pretty tedious. Following our method allows you to see your balance as well as being able to spend them easily.

Easiest/Safest method:

- Reindex Bitcoin Core. ie. put the old wallet.dat into the Bitcoin Core data directory, and start Bitcoin Core with the -reindex option. Yes, this will involve downloading the entire blockchain again, but it is the safest method and will not put your private keys at any risk. After Bitcoin Core finishes syncing, you'll see the final balance of your wallet and be able to create/send transactions directly from Bitcoin Core.

It might take a few days to resync.

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"Quickest" method:

- Dump the private keys from the wallet.dat and import into a lightweight wallet like Electrum. Note that "quickest" depends on your level of technical ability etc. Given that Bitcoin Core won't open your wallet file without crashing, you'd need to use something like PyWallet to dump the keys from the wallet.dat. Once you have your private keys, Electrum will sync in a few minutes and show your balance etc.

Note that this involves using Python scripts and the commandline. Unless you're familiar with both, I would not recommend this.

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Most "robust" long term method:

- Turn off pruning in Bitcoin Core, then restart Bitcoin Core using the -reindex option. Note that this will require 350+gigs of diskspace, if you don't have this diskspace available, do NOT try this method, it'll just cause you more issues when Bitcoin Core runs out of storage space ;)

I tried to research and according to some of my research Bitcoin core will hide addresses/public keys until the core is fully synced. They added this for privacy purposes and it was started at the 0.13.0 version.

If you want to view those public keys/receiving addresses then your last option is to run bitcoin with -reindex and let the core fully synced. Once the core is fully synced all used addresses will show up from the address receiving tab.