Electrum backup question

[cyptomania]

I found some electrum wallet backups on a usb stick I found,I loaded them into electrum and it asks for the password,I am sure there is nothing in them there from 7-8 years ago but want to check to be sure.

I just want to see a balance,if there is anything worth while in them then I can worry about finding my old password,I used the same password but with different numbers at the end so it is do-able but I don't want to start this process unless I know there is some btc in there.

Can I do this,see the balance of the backup somehow,I don't know the seed or the wallet number but can figure out the password if there something there,I know with unknown btc wallet backup's you load them into qt and can see the wallet number and balance but I can't seem to figure out how to do this with the electrum backup.

[Charles-Tim]

You need the password to recover the wallet is the simple answer.

If the password is not long, probably btcrecover could help. It can also help if you remember part of the password to the extent only little characters are missing.

https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[BlackHatCoiner]

What you have is an encrypted file. You can't check the balance without the password, because to know the balance means to know the addresses, which coincidentally means to know the content of the file. The tool Charles have suggested you above is your best course to figure out if you have some coins left over.

[cyptomania]

Ok thanks that's what I was wondering,all my passwords start with the same word then I add numbers at the end but I'm not going to spend any time on wallets I can't see the balance of,I'm sure there empty with maybe a dust balance,not worth the time,thanks.

[tranthidung]

I found some electrum wallet backups on a usb stick I found,I loaded them into electrum and it asks for the password

Password was set up by you in the past and its role is to protect your wallet file. You and others can only access private keys in that wallet file if you have the wallet password.

I just want to see a balance

You can only see it if you successfully access that wallet file by your password or if you have its public address to check it on Bitcoin block explorers or import it to have a Watch-only wallet. It seems you don't have anything of such.

if there is anything worth while in them then I can worry about finding my old password,I used the same password but with different numbers at the end so it is do-able but I don't want to start this process unless I know there is some btc in there.

Can I do this,see the balance of the backup somehow,I don't know the seed or the wallet number but can figure out the password if there something there,I know with unknown btc wallet backup's you load them into qt and can see the wallet number and balance but I can't seem to figure out how to do this with the electrum backup.

Only one option, brute force your wallet password but chance to succeed depends on complexity of your password and how many key characters you remember as well as computational power of your computer used for brute-forcing process.
Are you passwords in the green?. If your password is in the green, chance to brute-force it is silm. 

[cyptomania]

Hi,all my old passwords with my btc wallets start with the same word,lets say Bitcoin for an example,so my password is Bitcoin with numbers at the end or Bitcoin??,I usually used 5,I lost the book with all my stuff on it long ago but during covid I got my old thinkpad up and running and had lots of wallets,I was on here asking questions too,I got the online cracker from Thegrideon and it cracked them all in a minute or less so I'm not concerned about that but Thegrideon wont load a Electrum wallet,so I would have to get another program,set it up and stuff which is OK if there is any btc in them,so I'm just going to forget about it,too much time and work for what I'm sure are just empty wallets,I thought there was a way to see the balance of them,OK thanks everyone.

[BitMaxz]

If you remember the old password but it has missing characters then you can brute-force the wallet. Since you said the missing characters are numbers I think you can easily brute-force the wallet

You can follow this link below for missing numbers
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2456365.msg25174677#msg25174677

Or learn how to expand wildcards below.

- https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md#expanding-wildcards

[dzungmobile]

It's a video guide for brute-force wallet password with btcrecover

Brute-force your online blockchain.info wallet with btcrecover. It is for blockchain.com wallet but you can watch it to see how more easily to brute-force password if you have more characters in that password.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Hi,all my old passwords with my btc wallets start with the same word,lets say Bitcoin for an example,so my password is Bitcoin with numbers at the end or Bitcoin??

In that case it will be trivially easy to bruteforce the passwords using btcrecover. The longest part by far will be downloading and setting it up, but you can probably do all that in 20 minutes and then it would only take a few seconds to run.

[pooya87]

Electrum uses two forms of encryption, a full wallet file encryption and partial encryption where only "secrets" are encrypted. Electrum should be able to load a wallet file if it is not fully encrypted and I don't think the "full encryption" option existed in 2016, I believe it was added mid 2017 in v. 2.8 but I could be wrong.
Make sure to create a backup of the files before loading them into Electrum.

Loading them into Electrum is also easy, you just use the File > Open option to navigate to the file location and open them.
Then Electrum should show you a list of addresses, history and then sync up and show you the final state.

[jeraldskie11]

There's no way to see your balance in your old wallet through private key or password.
You have to know the address to be able to check the balance.
So the best thing to do is finding your password. Try to check in a place or thing where you usually keep your passwords or important details. You can try to check in your old notebook in your old drawer. You can also try to check it in your browsing history if you didn't tried clearing it.

[AbuBhakar]

There's no way to see your balance in your old wallet through private key or password.
You have to know the address to be able to check the balance.
So the best thing to do is finding your password. Try to check in a place or thing where you usually keep your passwords or important details. You can try to check in your old notebook in your old drawer. You can also try to check it in your browsing history if you didn't tried clearing it.

Private key doesn’t need password so if you are holding private key then you can have a direct access already to your wallet because you’re holding already the key. On this case was only the electrum backup or simply wallet.dat file is the OP holding which means this is an encrypted backup to access his balance. Private key is a different item from wallet.dat.

Nevertheless, the suggestion above is right on this case by brute forcing the password.  But it might took a significant of time if the OP remembered password is different to the real password. This is the gamble on using brute force with a keyword set on it. 

[cyptomania]

Hi,I'm all set,I got the The Grideon cracker online for $30 bucks,it was a bit frustrating on how to set it up but once I figured that out it got the password,I knew most of the password so it was fine,nothing in there as I thought but I had the "who knows" for a few days LOL.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I have no idea why you would pay for closed source software, when there are better, faster, more powerful, open source, free, alternatives available.

[Lida93]

So the best thing to do is finding your password. Try to check in a place or thing where you usually keep your passwords or important details. You can try to check in your old notebook in your old drawer. You can also try to check it in your browsing history if you didn't tried clearing it.

Hope you know 7 to 8 years ago is not 8 days ago, and that all of these suggestions though not bad but I don't see them leading him to anywhere close to what he's looking for going by the years gone by especially for a browser history.

In .my opinion OP should just forget about it since he can't get the password to access the wallet from his head and from all indication it doesn't show that he had the password written down some safely 8 years ago that should warrant a search anywhere. It's painful to agree but he should just let go, maybe in the nearer future there maybe possible technological brute solution to such case but not until then.

[Othellobit]

8 years is a long time ago. more over, if u lost keys for a desktop Bitcoin wallet that was not backed up, and probably threw away the hard drive, I don't think the wallet is retrievable. It is easy to recover a Bitcoin. Info wallet,  but on conditions.  For necessity, u can read through
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/64446/wallet-gone-and-lost-recovery-phrase-how-to-get-back-my-bitcoins

[jeraldskie11]

<snip>

Hope you know 7 to 8 years ago is not 8 days ago, and that all of these suggestions though not bad but I don't see them leading him to anywhere close to what he's looking for going by the years gone by especially for a browser history.

That's not what I'm saying. This is what I mean: My Activity. There, you can see your whole search history, not just the most recent one. Whatever device he uses, whether a smartphone or a PC, it will be recorded as long as he is linked in to his Google account while browsing.

Both of you aren't being helpful. Did any of you read that OP already crack the password of his wallet using paid software (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5447561.msg62044032#msg62044032)?

I didn't realize it had been posted until after I answered to his post, so thank you for informing me. However, it may assist him in searching for anything relevant to this and locating the critical information he requires to solve his problem. Here's the link: My Activity