Corrupt Wallet??

[tom11011]

Hi Group.

Just yesterday, I upgraded my bitcoin wallet from 0.8.1 to 0.8.3

Earlier today, I sold a bitcoin to someone without issue.  This is the first time I have ever sent a bitcoin.  Everything seemed fine.

Now, about 8 hours later, I noticed a popup message on my screen saying the wallet file was having some kind of issue and bitcoin automatically closed after I said ok to the message.

When I started bitcoin back up, the wallet had 0 coins, 0 transactions, and 0 addresses.  I closed the wallet and re-opened it again.  Same thing.

Now, luckily, I decided to make a backup of the wallet.dat file by copying and pasting it just after I sold the bitcoin.  I put a copy of this wallet into the directory, started bitcoin again, and it seems to be working ok.  I notice that my backup wallet is about twice as large as the problem wallet file size wise.

My wallet file was/is encrypted if that matters.

One other thing, I changed my windows 8 pc password earlier today too just for the heck of it, not sure if that would have any bearing.

A few questions.

1.) What might have happened here?
2.) Could there be some issue with the 0.8.3 client?
3.) If I didn't have a backup, could I have been toast?
4.) Is it possible the old file might be able to be recorvered (not that it matters, but just curious)

Tom

[Abdussamad]

It could be a problem with your hard disk. You should check it for bad sectors.

Other possibilities are malware. So a virus scan would be a good idea.

2) Maybe.

3) Yes.

4) Maybe.

If you are worried about this sort of thing I recommend using electrum. You only have to back it up once and the backup is just 12 words that you remember/write down.