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I have a VM with Bitcoin Core Wallet and forgot the password. I have a backup of the DAT file that was from before I encrypted it. I setup a new install and used the DAT and it has most of the transactions and once it synced and download all the block chain it shows all the transactions but that there are only 0.013... and the VM is also synced but shows more coins. All the same transactions are listed but the amount left is not the same on the old DAT restore. Are there other files than the DAT needed?

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Sorry, not all the same transactions are listed in both. The old wallet is missing the last few transactions and is a about 4 months older than the last transaction in the encrypted wallet.

When the wallet.dat gets encrypted... for safety reason, it resets the seed/keypool, generates a bunch of new keys/addresses and then "archives" the old keys/addresses (marks them as inactive so they don't get "used" when you generate a new address to receive or for change).

That might explain why your old (pre encryption) backup is not showing all the transactions... new keys/addresses would have been generated after the encryption was set and coins have been received on the new addresses that the old wallet.dat does not have. :-\

However, it's interesting that you say both wallets show exactly the same transactions? ??? But a difference balance? ??? I could only guess that it's because you sent some coins... and the old pre-encryption wallet does not have the change address from the new post-encryption wallet... so, it thinks that both UTXOs created were going to external wallets.

You could probably confirm that by using the getaddressinfo command (on the console in Bitcoin Core) with the "change" addresses shown in the most recent send transactions on both instances of Bitcoin Core and checking the "ismine" value... it will probably say "true" on the VM (with the encrypted version of the wallet.dat)... and "false" on the old unencrypted version (as it doesn't have those keys/addresses).

I can try but I thought I saw something say the console is locked as well.

Would there be anyway to fix the old (pre encryption) backup so I can send the remaining coins or are they lost?

The said part is I think I have had to do this before and I guess I got lucky using the old DAT file before. It was a number of years ago and my memory is shot. :(

I saw something about running a rescan command of some kind after restoring the DAT but it seems like the Core Wallet is doing that anyway when it see a new DAT file. It takes an hour or more on the logo screen saying "Rescanning...".

The console should not be "locked". The only things you won't be able to do without the passphrase is anything requiring the decryption of the keys (like signing transactions/messages or dumping the wallet keys etc)


Unfortunately no... even if you added a passphrase to an old copy of the unencrypted wallet.dat, it would just end up generating a different set of keys/addresses.


Correct. It will have already rescanned the wallet.


As this point, your best option would be to try and recover your wallet passphrase using something like: https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/

Or engaging the services of Dave @ wallet recovery services.
refer: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=240779
and: http://walletrecoveryservices.com/

Thanks for the info. I thought I was just locking access to the wallet not the coins to the wallet as well.

I thought I remembered the pass phrase but nothing is working.

My memory is so bad now I'm not sure what I did. :)

I think I thought having a (pre encryption) backup would work if I forgot the VMs pass phrase and maybe it would have if I made a backup without encryption after each transaction. :(

I found a newer backup that is scanning now but it is missing the last few transaction that the VM shows. So I guess it will also show the incorrect amount.

Wallets like Electrum have the option in settings to not use change addresses. This helps make backup a lot more simple, but you give up a certain amount of financial privacy in doing so. Still, change addresses are a tricky thing for people to comprehend and I would advise new users who don’t comprehend the way change addresses work to take advantage of features that will keep your coins from ending up at change addresses. Even if you manage your change addresses properly, you’d have to constantly be backing them up in order to keep from losing your funds in the event of a hard drive crash.

I'm not sure about the old old versions of Bitcoin Core/QT... but the newer ones definitely carry a warning to let you know that when you add encryption to a wallet.dat, as soon as the encrypted wallet is "used", old unencrypted backups will become "useless":
https://i.imgur.com/lGzHbCK.png

I hope it isn't a huge loss :-\

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That isn't really an issue with a wallet like Electrum... all addresses (receive and change) are recoverable from the seed. So, as long as you still have the seed, you can recover everything.

The same applies to a wallet like Bitcoin Core... the issue here is that the OP effectively changed the "seed" by adding encryption to the wallet (rendering old unencrypted backups useless)... and then lost/forgot the passphrase to the wallet... effectively removing their access to the seed/private keys required to access the change addresses.

This isn't really a "change" address issue, per se... it's a lost passphrase problem.

Not a huge loss and I don't recall a warring like that but it was about 3 years ago.

Again I could have sworn I'd recovered from a forgotten password this way before so I thought I was ok having an unencrypted backup. :(

You can't take it with you and I was struggling to think of something to buy with it anyway.

Just makes me mad that I can remember a few days ago anymore let alone 3 years ago. I should have put the pass word someplace and so on.

Bitcoin core version 0.11.1 from June 2017 (almost 4 years ago) had the a similar warning, only the non-important part is different:
http://randomace.tk/contents/reserved/temporary/corewarningencrypt2.png

That warning will be displayed after you've encrypted your wallet, maybe you missed that.

How do you do this part?

getaddressinfo (need to find the last change address and put here?)

When I try getaddressinfo by it's self it says "Method not found (code -32601)"

Looking at the last transaction I don't see a "change" addresses or "ismine" value.

I feel fairly sure the wallet on the VM is good as the amount is still the same after it synced up the last few years.

getaddressinfo wouldn't work without adding address at the end you should look like this when you type the command on the console


The address there is my BTC as sample change address the result sample would be like this

Since my address is generated from Electrum and not bitcoin core ismine result is false as you can see above.

Sample this image below it was generated from my bitcoin core wallet.

https://i.imgur.com/oYkc9n6.png

As you can see ismine is true it means that address is connected to my core wallet.

Try to add the change address at the end and let see if the result is true or not. If it shows true then you have a chance to get the private key of the change address where your BTC missing.

Correct... just try ALL of the output addresses associated with the last "send" transaction (or two) that you see in your "old" unencrypted backup wallet.dat

If my theory is correct... both addresses (for each send transaction) will show "ismine: false" when you use the getaddressinfo command on your old unencrypted wallet.dat, which would indicate that it is missing the "change" address keys. :-\

Then try using getaddressinfo on the "encrypted" VM wallet.dat using those same output addresses. Again, if my theory is correct, one of the output addresses should show "ismine: true" to indicate that the encrypted wallet does have the "change" address keys.

It doesn't really help you recover the keys... but at least it will explain why your transactions are the same, but your balances are different... and it will confirm that you'll be unable to recover all the coins using your old unencrypted wallet.dat.

What would be the correct address to use on blockchain.com to and make sure the encrypted wallet is correct?

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So I use this command with my addresses from the last few transactions addresses.

getaddressinfo bc1qptg5vvtmwwgn96qgwgalpflqjvxxmvlwmu8529


Then I can see if ismine is true.


"Try to add the change address at the end and let see if the result is true or not. If it shows true then you have a chance to get the private key of the change address where your BTC missing."

How is this part done? "Try to add the change address at the end" And this is all on the unencrypted wallet?

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Sorry I'm not great at this stuff. When I look at the last few transactions there is a To address and a Transaction ID and they don't work with the getaddressinfo command.

ok... so, what you want to do it find the most recent "send" transaction that is in the "encrypted" wallet... then right click the transaction and select "copy transaction id":
https://i.imgur.com/QqyXbQS.png


Once you have that TransactionID, you can lookup the transaction on a blockexplorer like blockchain.com, blockchair.com, blockstream.info, blockcypher.com etc... For this example, I'll use blockchain.com. Lets say that our TransactionID is: 8868a53fdf818ce4dda050b9e5992d9a61e3fe3da754b68b521e48acc94406bb (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/8868a53fdf818ce4dda050b9e5992d9a61e3fe3da754b68b521e48acc94406bb)

We put that into blockchain.com and we see this:
https://i.imgur.com/45iHDv9.png (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/8868a53fdf818ce4dda050b9e5992d9a61e3fe3da754b68b521e48acc94406bb)

We can see on the right hand side, the "output" addresses:
- 1ETCkqqVd4CTffmZJyL3R18eGbVb44EXbU (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1ETCkqqVd4CTffmZJyL3R18eGbVb44EXbU)
- 3EEJFjZURxShNr2AoJtbfcvCB749yzP7LP (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/3EEJFjZURxShNr2AoJtbfcvCB749yzP7LP)

What you want to do is check all of the output addresses that you see for your transaction using the getaddressinfo command... on both the unencrypted and the encrypted wallet.dat's...

So, for our example transaction, we want to use the following commands on both the old and new wallet.dat's:


If my theory is correct, on the old unecrypted wallet.dat... all of the output addresses will say "ismine:false"

like this:

and this:


However, when you check the addresses on the "new" encrypted wallet.dat... one of those addresses will display as "ismine: true" (and most likely "ischange: true" as well)... like this:

Thanks, that is great! Now I'm using the output address but I still get the same error.

Method not found (code -32601)

I'm using the debug window and the Console tab.

Is the getaddressinfo  command not available in v0.16.0?

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Ok, I have v0.21.1 installed on another VM and the command works now.

Trying them out now.

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Do I need the block chain data to run the commands?

When I tried to switch the wallet I got an Open wallet failed error.

Wallet loading failed. Prune: last wallet synchronization goes beyond pruned data. You need to -reindex (download the whole blockchain again in case of pruned node)

That will take a few days.

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Ok, on V21 they both say "ismine": false but that is with out the blockchain.

Do I really need to setup two VMs with v21 and download blockchain for each wallet?

oh... you're running a pruned wallet... that could potentially be problematic with attempting to "sync" (ie. rescan) a wallet.dat file... Bitcoin Core can't scan blocks it doesn't have on disk... so if your node is pruned, it can't scan the pruned blocks... hence the error message about needing to "reindex" (and redownload the missing blocks).

However, using the getaddressinfo should still identify which address you have the private keys to... regardless of whether the wallet.dat is properly synced (rescanned) or not... and regardless of whether or not the node is pruned... and regardless of whether or not the node is fully synced (ie. all blocks downloaded/indexed)

How many output addresses where in the last send transaction? ??? One... or two? ???

If there is only one, then it's likely an external address... so try going back to the next "Send" transaction... and find the output addresses from that and check those... you're really trying to find the most "send" transaction that has at least two output addresses.

Is there a way to un-prune the wallet? Just let a new install of the Core Wallet download all the blockchain without a wallet loaded?

How to I verify the amount in encrypted wallet is correct with blockchain.com?

The last transaction has two output address. It's a little confusing as the last day on the unencrypted wallet I had some sent transactions that I was having an issue sending they and the receiver later returned one. The ID and amount are the same in both but the date/time stamp differs by 4 hours or so.

Unencrypted Wallet
Both outputs have "ismine": false.

Encrypted Wallet
First output has "ismine": false.

Second output has "ismine": true with more info like, "desc" and "pubkey".


BitMaxz had said there was a chance to update the Unencrypted Wallet? But I'm not sure what he is asking to do here.

"Try to add the change address at the end and let see if the result is true or not. If it shows true then you have a chance to get the private key of the change address where your BTC missing."

Correct. Just unselect Prune, and restart Bitcoin Core. It will take a while to download, verify and store 400 GB.

How to I verify the amount in encrypted wallet is correct with blockchain.com?

I tried using the getaccountaddress "" command but when I put the output into blockchain.com I get this for the BTC address and BCH address:

This address has transacted 0 times on the Bitcoin blockchain. It has received a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00) and has sent a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00). The current value of this address is 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00).

Has it really been zeroed out somehow? :(

No, I didn't say that, I was actually focused on getaddressinfo command this command only use to get the info of the address and to know if your wallet.dat holds its private key.

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If you can publicly post the whole transaction history here both from your new wallet and from the wallet in your VM then maybe we can analyze why you get 0.013 remaining balance after you restore it with the latest version.


What actually your purpose? Do you want to get the whole balance the same as what you see from your wallet in VM?
Or your purpose is to withdraw them all and transfer them to another wallet?

If you want to transfer them to another wallet then you can just copy all addresses from your wallet in VM(With the correct balance). Click the "window" and then "receiving addresses" it must show all of your used addresses including the change address. Collect them and put them to notepad and then check them one by one on http://blockchain.com/ to check each of these addresses has balance and calculate them in total.

If the total balance is correct after you calculate it there is a problem with your old wallet.dat file backup there might be a missing address on that wallet after you imported it to the latest bitcoin core. Possible in that time you might be generated a new receiving address after the backup and the missing BTC is in newly generated address.


If all suggestion above doesn't work the only solution that I can see here is to brute-force the wallet.dat file where the BTC balance is correct.
There is a tool called BTCrecover that you can use to brute-force the wallet file you can find it from here https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover
Or take the service of http://walletrecoveryservices.com/

They are both the same wallet. One is old and unencrypted. I don't want to really move them I was just hoping there was a to update the old unencrypted wallet and get access to the coins. But the old unencrypted wallet is missing the last few transactions that the encrypted wallet has. It sound like no as HCP said when I encrypted wallet for safety reason, it resets the seed/keypool, generates a bunch of new keys/addresses and then "archives" the old keys/addresses (marks them as inactive so they don't get "used" when you generate a new address to receive or for change).

As it looks like there is no way to update the unencrypted version of the wallet. I'd like to know how to simply verify the amount in the encrypted wallet so I can maybe try to work with Dave at http://walletrecoveryservices.com/.

Load it in Bitcoin Core, and let it synchronize the blockchain. It's easy, but slow.

I have done that a few times but Dave said: "You should be able to verify whether it's legit by looking up one of the addresses holding BTC on blockchain.com to verify the current balance."

And I tried using the getaccountaddress "" command but when I put the output into blockchain.com I get this for the BTC address and BCH address:

This address has transacted 0 times on the Bitcoin blockchain. It has received a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00) and has sent a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00). The current value of this address is 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00).

Has it really been zeroed out somehow?

As I suspected... at some point after adding the encryption passphrase to the wallet.dat, you have then spent some coins using the "encrypted" wallet.dat... and that transaction has created "change" which was sent to a "change" address that is not in your "old unencrypted" wallet.dat :-\

Effectively, the only way you're going to be able to recover all your coins, is to recover your wallet passphrase... All this to-ing and fro-ing with checking address balances and stuff really doesn't matter.

You've synced the blockchain, and you've rescanned the "encrypted" wallet.dat... you can be confident that the balance it is showing is "correct". However, without the wallet passphrase, you're not going to be able to get the full balance... as there are coins controlled by private keys that you cannot access. As, you have limited access to some of the keys with the "unencrypted" wallet.dat, then you'll only be able to get the balance that is shown in the "unencrypted" wallet (assuming that the unencrypted wallet has been fully synced/rescanned).

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So, it now boils down to this:

- Do you have any idea at all what the passphrase might be?
- Did you ever make notes about your passwords?
- Did you use a common set of passphrases for things back when you were using these wallets?
- Did you use a common "structure" to your passphrases (ie. 6 chars starting with 1 uppercase + 4 numbers)?
- Were your passphrases relatively short (<=10 chars)?
- Just letters+numbers or did you use "special" characters like !@#$%^&*()_+ etc?

Your chances of recovering the passphrase depend on the answers to these questions.

Yes to most of those and I've made a list and tried all I can think of with the change passphrase option.

I've sent a message to Dave and he asked that I verify whether the encrypted is legit by looking up one of the addresses holding BTC. I was just trying to do as he asked but not sure I've done it right.

I tried using the getaccountaddress "" command but when I put the output into blockchain.com I get this for the BTC address and BCH address:

This address has transacted 0 times on the Bitcoin blockchain. It has received a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00) and has sent a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00). The current value of this address is 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00).

don't use the getaccountaddress command... just use the output address that you found from the last send transaction that shows "ismine: true" in the "encrypted" wallet.dat (and "ismine: false" in the old wallet.dat)... That address is where the "missing" coins are.

Then simply search that address on blockchain.com and see what the history/balance of that address is.


Also, I suspect you're using an old version of Bitcoin Core... getaccountaddress was deprecated several versions ago (v0.17 and removed in v0.18)...

Thanks for your patience.

"just use the output address that you found from the last send transaction"
Got the last Transaction ID from the encrypted wallet and then got the 2 output addresses the second one has the "ismine: true"

I then use that output address on blockchain.com? It has almost no coin listed???

You just make things complicated why you don't check all addresses on receiving address from an encrypted wallet?

Here's the reference

https://i.imgur.com/VZKcdRf.png

Gather all addresses from that tab and paste it to notepad as I said recently.
You can check them one by one if what address has balance and calculate it in total so that you can provide it on http://walletrecoveryservices.com/
Dave wants to know if it's worth recovering or it's another wallet.dat file with a fake balance. There are lots of fake wallet.dat(lost password) out there with a huge amount of BTC balance selling on the market. So dave just wants to know if your wallet is not one of them.

If you can provide enough evidence that it has a balance then they will grab it and take the 15%-%20 of the fee after recovery.

You can also do what LoyceV said above and export all transactions in .csv you can provide them to Dave for analysis including all addresses from receiving address tab.

Sorry, I'm just not good at this stuff and without the last post I'd not know about the receiving addresses list and so on.

There are 6 receiving addresses listed.

Only two show a received and sent amount and just one has a final balance of 0.00010000 BTC. The one with a final balance has an amount received that does look like the amount I original stated with in 2012.

That 0.00010000 BTC doesn't match the match the encrypted or the old unencrypted amount.

But I've had this VM saved from the last time I used it and the wallet shows the correct amount even after syncing the blockchain up to date.

I'll try sending Dave the CSV.


Thanks for putting up with me.

The problem with the solution offered by BitMaxz, is that I suspect the bulk of your coins are on a change address... NOT a receiving address. Bitcoin Core treats change addresses as "internal only" and tends to hide their existence from you. As such, change addresses will NOT be displayed in the "Receiving Addresses" list :-\


However, you can actually get Bitcoin Core to display ALL your current "Unspent Transaction Outputs" (aka UTXOs) in a fairly easy manner...

1. Set Bitcoin Core to enable "Coin Control Features"
- Goto: Settings -> Options:
https://i.imgur.com/IGEAoAf.png


- Select the "Wallet" tab... and make sure that "Enable Coin Control Features" is TICKED:
https://i.imgur.com/KbT0tdi.png


2. View all available UTXOs:
- On the main Bitcoin Core screen, select the "Send" Tab:
https://i.imgur.com/iYhbf0v.png


- You should now see the new section at the top labelled "Coin Control Features"... click the "Inputs..." button:
https://i.imgur.com/4pGVvL2.png

Assuming that your Bitcoin Core is fully synced and scanned (like your encrypted wallet should be), You'll see a list of all the coins that your wallet believes are currently available to be spent by your wallet. You will also see any "change" addresses listed with the label "(change)" as per the screenshot above. By default, "receive" addresses will tend to have "(no label)", but they can also have user-defined labels if one was manually added.

Each UTXO will also have the associated address listed with it... which you can easily copy by right clicking on the appropriate line and selecting "copy address" from the pop up menu... you can then paste the address into the blockexplorer of your choice to confirm that the coins/balance are correct etc.

You can also get the Transaction ID for the transaction that created that specific UTXO from the same pop up menu.


Hopefully, this method will allow you to see exactly which addresses your coins are currently associated with, and whether those addresses are "change" addresses, or "receive" addresses.

If that's the case, get all of your addresses with balance from the result of:

Open the console (Window->Console) and type that command:
All of your used addresses including change will show up there, the associated balance will display below each addresses.

Dave is now working on finding the password. Maybe he will get lucky and find it soon. Just makes me mad that I have no real recollection of what password I used from just three years ago and that I did make an unencrypted backup but not after the last transaction and that I did not leave a clue to the password or something. Getting old stinks. :)

FYI - I found an old backup of the wallet on my work laptop of all places and its file name gave me a clue about the correct pass phrase and after 30 tries or so I got it.  :)

Congratulations,
you might want to contact the service where you've given the other wallet.dat because he might still be working on its password.

There's a "lock topic" button below (lower-left) if you think this thread's issue is solved.

Yeah, I let Dave know as soon as I was in but he said he was not currently working on it after a first pass.