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Hey guys, have some lost funds from 2013 which I've sporadically tried to regain access to over the years always getting an incorrect pw message. Well the other day when attempting to see my lost seed the pw was accepted but the seed window was blank. As it's such an old version and is offline I was wondering whether that was the cause of the blank window or is it possible I never created a seed? I've saved a copy of the wallet but I'm still hesitant to upgrade before getting some further advice on how to proceed.

I also tried following the advice in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=553096.0 but as it's from 2014 I'd expect it's also based on electrum being online.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

To begin with, make at least one or two more copies of the wallet file and save them separately (on a USB stick or similar), just in case you have a backup. What you could already read in the thread you linked to is to download the latest version of Electrum, and try to open your wallet with it. As far as I know it is not possible that the wallet did not create the seed, but it is certainly possible that you did not write it down.

It is very important that you understand the dangers of fake versions, of which there are many - and that you download the wallet exclusively from https://electrum.org/#home

The following information can be very helpful -> [GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum [Guide] (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0)

You don't need internet connectivity to view the seed phrase. You should however be able to export the private keys from that version by going to Wallet > Private Keys > Export and saving them to a file, then import them into the newer version.

Followed this advice and got the invalid pw of doom. It seems the previous 'success' of viewing a blank seed window was a false positive, cheers guys.

Are you sure you didn't make a typo or two in the password the first time you entered it which actually turned out to be the correct password?

Have you only tried to sporadically guess the password yourself, or have you ever made a serious effort to brute force it? btcrecover (https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/) is a very well known and widely used piece of software which supports brute forcing passwords on Electrum version 1.x wallets.

There is an installation guide here (https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md), and here is the guide (https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/TUTORIAL.md) on how to use it to attempt to brute force passwords via setting up a tokens file. If it is a significant amount of money you have stuck in the wallet, then it might be worth the effort.

I've tried various combos of likely mistypes but there are quite a few different password combos it could be so here we are. Yet to try brute force as it's the nuclear option due to the % that is taken. I'd not seen the do it yourself version before so I'll give it a go.

The thing I find most strange is that when trying to view my seed phrase via inputting the pw all others give me an invalid pw message while one very logical option specific to me actually takes me to a blank seed window. I checked my electrum raw data and I do indeed have an encrypted seed. I tried that particular pw when trying to import the private key and got the invalid pw message.

This gives me an impression that your wallet file is corrupted because it seemed to have accepted that particular password but the seed that it should've displayed is missing.
(I can't reproduce unfortunately)

Also, a wallet without a seed (eg. imported) shouldn't have a clickable "seed" option, it'll be grayed-out.

Thanks for your input. How can I tell if the file is corrupted and if it is how should I proceed? 

Can you try this first?

There is a tool that you can decrypt electrum seed if you know the exact password you can try this tool below works on and I think the wallet 1.9.5 portable in your PC/Laptop is crashing which causes PW invalid it could be the wallet file or the software itself.

Anyway, try to use this tool https://github.com/gurnec/decrypt_electrum_seed then extract them and install python after that look for this "decrypt_electrum_seed.py" double click that file and point it to your wallet file. If it asks for a password for decryption then try some password that you know.

Take note always make a backup copy of your wallet file and make sure always run them in offline mode.

Normally, Electrum will detect it upon opening the wallet file.
But since it's the encrypted seed that may be affected, Electrum can't detect if it's corrupted.

Anyways, if you try the post above and it resulted with something like:
The seed may be corrupted.

Recovering a corrupted file is a job for data professionals and out of my scope, sry.