Initialization of Ledger HW.1 disabled in Electrum

[KevinG34]

Hi,

I recently purchased a couple of Ledger HW.1 hardware wallets, and am trying to initialize them.  I understand that Ledger no longer supports the device, and I had bought them for some family members to get into crypto.  I read that Electrum can be used to access the HW.1, and I tried this in Windows and Linux.  But I get an error that initialization is disabled for HW.1.  Is there any way around this?  Perhaps a setting change to re-enable it?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Kevin G

[BitMaxz]

It seems that they no longer support this hardware wallet but according to this link below. It still works on the old version of Electrum I don't know what version.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/j2wyrg/how_to_access_my_ledger_hw1/

Can you try to install this version 3.3.8?

You can still download the old version from here https://download.electrum.org/3.3.8/

[Charles-Tim]

If I will advice, it will be good to never use a wallet not supported by ledger company again. I am just wondering how you were able to buy such wallet, you need to be careful of people that will repackage back used wallets. There could be vulnerabilities in the wallet which could have now been fixed in the ones supported by ledger nano, such as ledger nano S and X and the ones still supported by ledger. Do not use such wallet, also using old electrum version for it is not advisable. You can get your family member a ledger nano S which is what you supposed to advice people to use, or latest one ledger nano x, not such unsupported wallet, that they should use supported ones which the latest version of electrum can run.

[dkbit98]

Are you the same person asking this question on reddit one month ago?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/knzguo/is_my_hw1_useless_now/

I would be very careful with using discontinued products like ledger HW1, and old version Electrum wallets that could have some serious security flaws.
If you ask me I would not hold a single satoshi on ledger HW1 but ymaybe you can use it with Bitcoin testnet to show your family how Bitcoin works.