Did My Software Uninstall Itself?

[evansste]

I installed Bitcoin Core several months ago.  I had it running yesterday, and got it to sync again with the Bitcoin network.  After letting it run for most of the day, I shut it down at the end of the day.  When shutting it down, it showed the usual pop-up window, informing me that I needed to wait for the window to disappear before shutting down the computer.  I waited for the window to disappear before shutting down the computer.

Today, I figured I'd start the program again.  However, the program appears to be missing.  My operating system is Lubuntu 16.10.  The program usually appears in start -> Office.  But now, the icon is simply missing.  I opened a terminal and typed "bitcoin-qt" at the prompt.  It returned with the message: "bitcoin-qt: command not found".  Is anyone aware of this sort of thing happening with Bitcoin Core?

Because I'm unable to open Bitcoin Core, I can't say which version it is.  My computer is an MSI 970 GAMING motherboard, containing 32GB of RAM and an AMD FX-8350 8-core processor.  I have a 2TB hard drive with 1.7TB of free disk space.  I had the entire blockchain downloaded, and completely synced yesterday evening.

If anyone knows what may have caused my Bitcoin Core icon to disappear from my menu, and knows of a way for me to run the client again, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks so much for your time, and I look forward to any suggestions that anyone is willing to give.

[achow101]

Just reinstall Bitcoin Core. If the software is still installed on your computer, then it will just overwrite those binaries. If it isn't then it will install new ones.

[evansste]

Thanks for the advice.  So does that mean that, if I reinstall, I won't have to re-download the entire blockchain again from scratch?

[escrow.ms]

So does that mean that, if I reinstall, I won't have to re-download the entire blockchain again from scratch?

Yes that's correct. It will just overwrite core software,everything else is safe.

[evansste]

Thanks so much, to both of you.  I reinstalled, and that did the trick.  Now I'm up and running again.

Thanks again for your time and help.

[warningsigns]

That's a scary thing to happen. Going to bed and waking up to a blank screen or a self-destructing wallet.

Always always always keep a back up of your wallet's private keys. Multiple back ups. In different formats so other wallets can retrieve your bitcoins in the event of the inevitable happening to your main device.

This happened to me once back in 2014. I was using multibit and I didn't understand how change addresses worked back then. The entire bitcoins disappeared. I broke out in a cold sweat. It affects one both mentally and physically. Unlike banks, you know there is no support staff or branch to go to. I resynched the wallet and only then did the bitcoins reappeared. Very stressful.

I now use breadwallet and I still keep multiple backups of the secret phrase. I even converted it to a private key, just in case.