Bitcoin Forum

Hi All,

Newbie here. I've got the Electrum ver 1.9.8 btc wallet installed on my Win7 laptop. What is the best practice for keeping it updated? Do I just check for and download and install the latest version every month or so? Is there some way I can get automatically notified when a new version of the Electrum Win wallet is ready for download?

Should I uninstall the old wallet before installing a new version?

(I will do multiple local and remote backups of my wallet before doing any installs or upgrades.)

Thanks for helping a newbie,

Advait

Don't worry about these kind of things with mainstream wallets like electrum... some people/miner are still using old bitcoin-qt clients and it is fine.

Just keep your private keys backup safe and update your wallet whenever you feel its time..  ;)

I take it you're not in IT ;)

Keeping software (especially security, financial, and web-browsing related) up to date is very important if you don't want to get infected or hacked (and lose your funds). Running old versions of Bitcoin QT isn't "fine", some versions had major bugs: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures).


I'm not aware of any built-in way inside the Electrum software, but there is a workaround.

1. Sign up for a GitHub (https://github.com/) account if you don't already have one.
2. Visit gh-release-watch.com (http://gh-release-watch.com/), click Login with GitHub, and authorize gh-release-watch.com to view the email address in your GitHub account.
3. In the Watch field, type in this, and then toggle the Not Watching button to Watching: spesmilo/electrum
4. Make sure a valid email address has been set.

Note: I've never actually used this service before, so I've no idea if it's reliable or not....


It's not necessary, but it doesn't hurt either.


That's always a good idea, but it also shouldn't be necessary. The only thing to be aware of is that Electrum 2.x will upgrade your wallet format. In order to downgrade to a 1.x version (not that you ever should need to), you'll either need to restore your wallet from it's seed or use a backup from before you upgrade.

Side note: if you do remote backups, be sure you've got a strong password on the wallet, or use a zero-knowledge backup provider such as SpiderOak (and a strong password with them).

He already knows he need to periodically update his client and pc, that should be enough for a regular user..

I made myself a treminder to check for updates once a month. It seems like that will be sufficient. In general I like to keep my software up to date so I have the latest security updates. Thanks.

Any way to mark a thread as "solved"?

Towards the bottom left of the page there's a "lock topic" link you can use if you like (only visible to the OP and to Admins).

Ahhh... That's it. OK, thanks.