Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: topslop1 on October 10, 2011, 03:27:28 AM



Title: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: topslop1 on October 10, 2011, 03:27:28 AM
Okay, so I have miners mining and bitcoins being sent to an address that I had on my computer.  I re-installed Windows and now am trying to figure out how I have 'ownership' of the wallet or how I can access the wallet online now?  I am having trouble figuring out how to open it up within the bitcoin client again. 



Title: Re: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: Maged on October 10, 2011, 03:44:01 AM
Use this to attempt to recover your Bitcoins:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25091.0


Title: Re: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: Revalin on October 10, 2011, 04:24:13 AM
The keys to access your coins are in the wallet.dat file.  Hopefully you saved a copy of this before you reinstalled.  If you didn't format the hard drive when you reinstalled, do a file search for wallet.dat.  The tool maged linked will find it if it hasn't been overwritten yet.  You can also recover your coins if you have an older backup copy of your wallet.dat - it's valid for up to 100 transactions after the last backup.

If you can't recover this file at all, your coins are gone.


Title: Re: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: topslop1 on October 11, 2011, 10:54:59 PM
Okay, so what should I do to ensure that this does not happen again  ;D


Title: Re: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: Revalin on October 12, 2011, 12:18:50 AM
Backups!  At minimum get a USB flash drive and save a copy of your wallet.dat after every few dozen transactions.  if you have a lot of coins some offsite backups are also in order.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Backup

Did you have any luck with the recovery tool?


Title: Re: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: topslop1 on October 12, 2011, 12:45:09 AM
If I'm on Windows and I boot up with say Ubuntu off of a flash drive and run that will it still work okay?


Title: Re: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: Revalin on October 12, 2011, 12:50:48 AM
Yes, it just scans the raw disk for anything that looks like valid keys and saves them.

The sooner you do it the better!  The more you use the system the more likely it is to be overwritten.


Title: Re: How do I "own" my wallet
Post by: topslop1 on October 12, 2011, 01:18:32 AM
Okay I'll throw Ubuntu on it and give it a shot.  Wish me luck.