Schoolboy howler - Forgotten passphrase

[hamario]

Hi,

Firstly let me say I'm a newbie when it comes to Bitcoin, but that doesn't excuse my schoolboy howler.

I've got my desktop Armory wallet set up and everything is working fine. I've bought some BTC (approx £50-£60 worth) and they are safely stored in my Armory wallet. I only encountered a problem when I tried to pay something using BTC. I was trying to make the payment in Armory and it asked me for my passphrase, it was at this point I realised I don't have it I think it's been thrown out (i remember writing it down). I've turned the house upside down looking for it, to no avail.

I know it's not a huge amount of funds in there, but I wouldn't like to think they're lost forever. Is there anything at all I can do to recover my passphrase? I don't remember anything about it

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Carlton Banks]

You didn't backup the wallet at all? Paper backup would solve this.

[hamario]

You didn't backup the wallet at all? Paper backup would solve this.

I know....lesson learnt

[doug_armory]

I know it's not a huge amount of funds in there, but I wouldn't like to think they're lost forever. Is there anything at all I can do to recover my passphrase? I don't remember anything about it

You're stuck. If you had a really good idea of the password but were off by only one or two characters, a script supplied with Armory would help you recover the password. If you have no knowledge whatsoever, and you didn't make a paper or unencrypted (electronic) backup, you're stuck. Sorry. Please please please make a backup next time, preferably a fragmented paper backup but any unencumbered backup will suffice.

[hamario]

I know it's not a huge amount of funds in there, but I wouldn't like to think they're lost forever. Is there anything at all I can do to recover my passphrase? I don't remember anything about it

You're stuck. If you had a really good idea of the password but were off by only one or two characters, a script supplied with Armory would help you recover the password. If you have no knowledge whatsoever, and you didn't make a paper or unencrypted (electronic) backup, you're stuck. Sorry. Please please please make a backup next time, preferably a fragmented paper backup but any unencumbered backup will suffice.

I feared as much. Thanks for replying and putting me out of my misery.

Like I said, lesson learnt and i will not make the same mistake again 

[Carlton Banks]

How about TimeVault or the Microsoft version of that? Got that running?

[hamario]

You're not going to believe it, but after days and days i remembered it! It just came to me! I've immediately created a paper back up! 

[btchris]

How about TimeVault or the Microsoft version of that? Got that running?

It sounds to me that OP only ever set one password for this wallet, and forgot it... if so, that wouldn't help...

(Also for the most part the Windows "previous versions" feature only works for documents if you've set up Backups, which isn't all that common....)

And now for a somewhat on-topic shameless self-promotion: btcrecover (a password recovery tool) supports Armory, and has some advantages (and disadvantages) compared to the script supplied with Armory (faster, more flexible, harder to use), although it's not any more useful in this case, sorry....

edit:

You're not going to believe it, but after days and days i remembered it! It just came to me! I've immediately created a paper back up! 

That's great! You can just ignore all the rest above

[hamario]

I'll remember it for next time...but I hope I'll never need it