Bitcoin Forum

Hello I have recently saw the prince increase in Mtgox and I decide I will sell my 3 bitcoins since they have been sitting around and I probably won't make much profit mining anymore. However, I have run into quite a dilemma.

At first I opened Bitcoin to synchronize the blocks, but the application eventually froze my entire system and so I had to reboot. When I rebooted, the block chain was corrupted or something of the sorts so I deleted it. I then proceeded to leave my Bitcoin client running all of the night (last night) in order to download the blocks. When I came home from school today I found that not a single block was downloaded, even though there was an internet connection the whole time (I do not know if it was up 100% of the time but our internet is fairly reliable and my dad would have mentioned the internet going out at night).

I then googled around and found out about the bootstrap, so I decided to download it. I then attempted using it 3 times:

1st I just put it in and delete my blockchain files, the client starts up after about 10 minutes at the splash screen saying it is loading the bootstrap and no blocks are loaded (0%)
2nd I deleted the entire folder besides my wallet and configuration file and when the client comes up, no blocks were loaded.
3rd I deleted the entire folder besides my wallet and configuration file again and ran as administrator. As you can guess, same result as before (0%)

Could someone please assist me and tell me why I cannot get the blocks downloaded? I'm a little irritated since I have 95% of the blocks before and now I cannot even get to .1%

I'd like to try avoiding using a lightweight client (I can't even transfer my bitcoins since I don't have the blockchain, right?) but if need be I'll switch

Also, should I try downloading the 0.8 RC?

If you only want to send your remaining coins to MtGox there's no need to run any client, or to download the blockchain at all.

Just import your wallet.dat to blockchain.info and send the coins from there to Gox,
https://blockchain.info/wallet/import-wallet

I thought of that too but in case I do decide to get back into the Bitcoin game again I don't want to have to wait for 3 days for the entire blockchain to download.

I haven't looked into it myself yet, but I've read that with the upcoming 0.8 release the blockchain/download/storage changes significantly, so hopefully we get rid of that problem soon.

Yeah that's what I read so I was wondering if I should possibly attempted downloaded the 0.8 RC, I may just use blockchain.info for the time being though.

Delete the entire folder besides the wallet and configuration file.  Do NOT put the blockchain files in yet.  Run the bitcoin-qt client, go to options, and check "detach database at shutdown".  Close the bitcoin-qt client.  Now you can import the new blockchain files into the directory.  Start the bitcoin client and see if it works.

P.S.  Exactly which files did you download?

I did what you said and it did not work.

I downloaded the bootstrap from here: http://eu2.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/

Here is the problem, :-[ I misread your post and thought you had downloaded blk001.dat, blk002.dat, blk003.dat, and blkindex.dat. (the blockchain files)  Since you have the bootstrap file you need to run Bitcoin-QT with the parameter -loadblock=/path/to/bootstrap.dat (for example, in windows, if you put the bootstrap.dat in the "C" directory the path would be C:/bootstrap.dat)

P.S. What Bitcoin-QT version are you running? ???

I tried starting in CMD prompt: "bitcoin-qt -loadblock=/path/to/bootstrap.dat" and "bitcoin-qt -loadblock=/path/to/D:\Utilities\Bitcoin\bootstrap.dat" and both start bitcoin without loading the blocks

And I'm on 0.7.2

Just checking you didn't actually put /path/to/bootstrap.dat but the path to the bootstrap right? ( like C:\Users\"Your user name"\Appdata\Roaming\Bitcoin )  Note: I believe the correct separate for windows is a back-slash(\) I used forward-slash(/) because I'm used to linux, you may want to double check this.

7.2 is supposed to auto-detect when the bootstrap file is in the bitcoin directory.

You say it started without loading the blocks, do you mean you didn't have all the blocks loaded when it started or that number of blocks wasn't increasing as it started?

This is a shot in the dark but the bitcoin client may simply update its blockchain from the bootstrap file in the same way it updates form the bitcoin network, witch means it will take awhile.

If all else fails you can try downloading blk001.dat, blk002.dat, blk003.dat, and blkindex.dat (the blockchain files) and use those instead of bootstrap.dat.

Okay I typed: "bitcoin-qt -loadblock=/path/to/D:\Utilities\Bitcoin\bootstrap.dat" and it still didn't work....
Do you think I should try downloading 0.8 (supposed to greatly increase the speed of importing bootstrap) before I attempt to download those files?

Type "bitcoin-qt -loadblock=D:\Utilities\Bitcoin\bootstrap.dat" assuming this is where bootstrap.dat is located.  Sorry for my poor communication skills. :P

Downloading version 0.8 is your choice; I personally have not chosen to do so because:
A) It has not been released yet and there are still many bugs to work out.
B) Since It has not been released it has not gone through extensive community use and testing.
C) I've not done enough research to trust version 0.8 so I continue to use 0.7.2.

However if you believe 0.8 would be easier for you go for it, but back up your wallet first! ;D

this bootstrap you speak of ends way too early.

but, then, i've already indicated where to get something better in half a dozen posts

Ugh I copy and pasted wrong, I meant I did do that command and it didn't work.

And zvs I'll check out the other ways then.