Bitcoin Forum

2 days ago installed bitcoin wallet on windows xp, i have 2BTC sent to my address but cannot verify balance because when trying to open btc wallet today all i get is this message "error loading blkindex.dat"
also it takes extremely long time to sync with network(yesterday), i have broadband connection 1-1.5MB/sec, yet couldnt sync with network after about 1 hour it still shows 38%
i have no antivirus and firewall is disabled
my first impression this system is totally unreliable, bitcoin=shitcoin

There is a fool-proof lightweight client here: http://ecdsa.org/electrum/


ETA from the future: Hm, I guess it really isn't fool-proof. ... Or maybe it is?

maybe fool-proof but not scam proof, why would anyone use client from untrusted source? go spam your link somewhere else

Funny that a noob with a dozen or so posts under their belt should say that ::)
I don't think you ever visited the alternative clients subforum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=37.0), did you?

the alternative client is certified by the subforum? Wow that is all i need to know, thank you for enlightening me wise man LOL

Delete the FUCKING blockchain and download it again...
Happy now? tell me in a couple days!

+1, I just had to do this and it worked.

I don't know - nor have I said anything - about the client being certified, but I am well aware who's acting as if they are certifiable...
Electrum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52003.0) is a well-known open source project, for crying out loud: grab the source, study it, compile and install when you have satisfied yourself that it is safe.

As a general piece of advice, taking a more humble approach when asking for help might be a strategy well worth considering.

thanks psy someone else advised that and i did try, it starts shows 99% than crashes with runtime error, next thing i will try to export/import private key and reinstall the wallet

Make sure you have a copy of %appdata%\bitcoin\wallet.dat somewhere safe as this file holds all your private keys.
Uninstall the bitcoin client and remove the %appdata%\bitcoin directory.
Reinstall the client and try to re-download the blockchain.
You can swap in the backed-up wallet.dat later on if you succeed.

Frankly, I'm wondering whether the fact you're running an 11 year old OS with no AV protection and no firewall might have something to do with your current predicament.

Do you have another machine you could install the client on?
Install the client (don't launch it yet), create the %appdata%\bitcoin directory and place a copy of the wallet.dat inside it, then launch the client and wait until it downloads the blockchain.

BTW, you can download the blockchain yourself from the project's sourceforge page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/).

I have bitcoin installed on windows XP 32 bits without a problem. And it works. I should add that it's not the very last version, so maybe there is an issue with the latest on Windows XP.

Or you have a corrupted HDD or a lot of fragmented files. I had an HDD die from running Bitcoin on Windows 7. Fragmentation killed it.

Windows 7 defrags on a schedule every Wednesday at 1AM local time. It also has some mods to the write process that reduces initial fragmentation. In short, I'm pretty sure your drive was about to die and the excessive number of seek ops pushed it over the edge.

If you leave your bitcoin running 24/7 it will never defrag the files as they are in use when the defragmentation occurs.
Add to that the fact that most people turn off their computers overnight...
My case was the former. Other persons may experience the latter.
My solution was to change my 24/7 Bitcoin node to a Linux box.

Financier=idiot

kokjo=asshole

i have latest blockchain and wallet.dat, will reinstall on my new laptop tomorrow, i will make this work, however i do not see how an average person would go through this much of trouble, bitcoin goes mainstream soon? i do not think so, unload your bitcoins while fools are still buying :-)

As has been stated multiple times by multiple people, there are lightweight clients available. You do not need to download the Satoshi Client (which is not really "official"), nor download the blockchain. That problem was solved long ago.

I will try that tomorrow, the latest blockchain file is over 1GB, you are saying that your client will sync in timely manner and i do not need to download the file, alright i will give it a try

Search for Electrum

So if I could just download the file blkindex.dat from someone else I would be up and running again and possibly avoid all the download time?

I have formatted my PC and I was now on the 2nd day downloading the blockchain, until my PC lost power and shutdown couple minutes ago. Now I'm getting same error as the OP.

I'm trying to restore my old backup, I just now noticed how big the %appdata%/Bitcoin directory actually is.

3.98GB     :o

You can download blockchain snapshots from:
http://eu1.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/

Copying it over to my new installation seemed to fix it and avoided downloading the whole blockchain again.   :-*

Nice, very useful. You could use a download accelerator and have the blockchain downloaded in few minutes/hours as opposed to days if downloading the regular way.

If you're running the newest version you can try to load the blockfile with the -loadblock=<file> option.
I think this happens because the download doesn't include a blkindex.dat or something.

Yes, that's exactly what it does - it validates and indexes them completely as if they were downloaded from network. That's the only way to import blocks in a zero-trust way (i.e. without needing to trust the one giving you the file).

EDIT: you're importing the actually active data files. Don't do that. Move them or rename them, or import from a different directory.