0 Connections on bitcoin client

[Shiver]

I recently backed up my wallet then installed Bitcoin version v0.7.0beta.  I encrypted the wallet, which it says is locked, and it's telling me the wallet is out of sync, which I presume it because I have zero connections.  I read somewhere that I need to make sure port 8333 needs to be open, but I haven'e changed anything about the router.

I apologise in advance if this is a simple fix already on the forum, but I've scanned around and cannot see anything about it.

How do I get connections and let the wallet update?

Regards
Paul

[Stephen Gornick]

I read somewhere that I need to make sure port 8333 needs to be open, but I haven'e changed anything about the router.

Perhaps your Windows "firewall" is not letting the app communicate?   It should automatically connect out and discover peers so if that isn't happening then check your operating system first, then the router next.

You could try to manually connect using telnet.  Try to connect to an external node.  If it times out without connecting, the problem isn't Bitoin then it is your o/s or network getting in the way.

Here's some nodes that you can try to connect to (not all necessarily will work but if more than a few are tried and you still can't connect, then the problem is on your end.)

 - http://blockchain.info/hub-nodes

[Shiver]

I've tried disabling the firewall and checked the router which has no restrictions.  Any other ideas?

[Shiver]

One other point I forgot to mention is that the wallet is encrypted and currently locked.  Do I need to unlock it somehow to allow it to resynch with the blockchain?

[BookLover]

Forgive me for hijacking the thread, but under what circumstances does the the latest bitcoin client warn you that the wallet is out of sync?

[Stephen Gornick]

I've tried disabling the firewall and checked the router which has no restrictions.  Any other ideas?

Did you try the telnet suggestion?  That will tell you if the problem is there is no path for the client to get an outgoing connection or if instead the client simply isn't trying to do so.

One other point I forgot to mention is that the wallet is encrypted and currently locked.  Do I need to unlock it somehow to allow it to resynch with the blockchain?

The wallet being encrypted will not stop anything as far as connecting or synching.   The only actions that require the wallet pass phrase are to get a new address or to spend.

[Stephen Gornick]

Forgive me for hijacking the thread, but under what circumstances does the the latest bitcoin client warn you that the wallet is out of sync?

I believe simply nothing more than is the timestamp for the last block in the longest chain older than it should be.  I don't know if that is like 30 minutes or two hours, but if it hasn't gotten a block in a while, then more blocks are needed, and thus the warning.

[Shiver]

Clicking on the link you gave me allows me to see transactions on any of the countries listed.
I also have another copy of the app on a laptop which is still updating the block chain, so when that's finished I'll try replacing the wallet.dat with my actual wallet.dat and see what happens there.  The desktop I'm having issues with at the moment was always okay until I upgraded.

[BookLover]

Forgive me for hijacking the thread, but under what circumstances does the the latest bitcoin client warn you that the wallet is out of sync?

I believe simply nothing more than is the timestamp for the last block in the longest chain older than it should be.  I don't know if that is like 30 minutes or two hours, but if it hasn't gotten a block in a while, then more blocks are needed, and thus the warning.

Thank you.

[deepceleron]

The latest version of Bitcoin has changed the way that previously connected clients are cached. In older versions, in the Bitcoin data directory, the file addr.dat contained a list of known peers so that you could quickly restart. The newest version of Bitcoin creates a file peers.dat that contains the same information. Perhaps one of these files is corrupted and the peer-to-peer component can't start correctly - deleting them both and restarting may be the solution.

Antivirus (Microsoft security essentials) may have it's own crap firewall that doesn't let unapproved software make connections. Discover if any AV package has a firewall component and disable it.

Did you put port forwarding rules into your router? It may be that your desktop PC was assigned a different IP address than was previously valid for the rules - remove any port forwarding and be happy with 8 connections.

Finally, if there is an actual program fault when launching Bitcoin, it may be recorded near the end of the debug.log file or db.log file.