Can't Reconfirm My Transactions!

[dtoliaferro]

Hi,

First off let me say that I think Bitcoin really a neat idea.

Anyway, so I got turned on to Bitcoin by a friend. Hit up a few Bitcoin faucets, bought a few coins from the same friend. Had my coins on my laptop, but I wanted to transfer them to my desktop. Half to keep them more safe (in my own mind), and just to test transferring my wallet. Followed the guide here to a "T." Only now, both my laptop and desktop clients say: "Warning: Please check that your computer's date and time are correct. If your clock is wrong Bitcoin will not work properly." They won't reconfirm my transactions on the new computer, and it's processing blocks very slowly and intermittently.

My system clock is correct on both machines. The CMOS battery on my laptop is dead, and the time is all screwy when I first boot it up, but I always correct it, but my desktop is totally fine. I've tried everything I can think of: re-installing Bitcoin, transferring my wallet again, obsessively looking at my time settings (time, date, & time zone), even reformatting and reinstalling Windows (XP). Nothing works, and I'm wondering what the problem is.

I've asked a few times on #bitcoin on FreeNode, but people just say: "a node near you is out of sync", or "it'll just fix itself." I'm hoping it will fix itself, but it's been a few days already and I'm kinda worried at this point. Does anybody have any ideas?

- Dan

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[caveden]

Can you locate your transaction in the blockexplorer or on the unconfirmed pool?

That at least tells your transaction has been taken into account. So, as long as you don't lose your wallet, you should be fine.

I don't know what's causing your problem, though. If it isn't the clock, isn't it maybe network connection? Do you see a reasonable amount of connections in both clients? Aren't both behind the same NAT and therefore only one getting income connections?

[dtoliaferro]

Thanks for the quick reply. My laptop is off now, I'm on my desktop. I don't remember how many connections one would have normally, but I only have 3 right now and it's been pretty stable at that number.

Edit: Also I have indeed confirmed my transactions on blockexplorer.com, thanks.

[Dude65535]

Try running bitcoin with the -rescan option. If you are not familiar with the command line then do the following.

Go to the folder that contains bitcoin.exe

Create a new .txt file

Type "bitcoin.exe -rescan" without quotes

Rename the .txt file to somthing.bat

Double click the .bat file

This will cause bitcoin to go back through the block chain looking for transactions belonging to addresses in your wallet.

[Pieter Wuille]

If the transactions are already in your wallet (= they are shown by the program), -rescan won't do anything.

It seems to me you simply don't have the complete blockchain yet. The status bar of the program should show (at least) 129046 blocks. If that isn't the case, just wait until they are (re)downloaded.

[dtoliaferro]

Hmm, -rescan seemed to do the trick. I hope my time problems don't return. Now I'm off to find a list of all the command line flags. Thanks a lot guys.

Edit: I'm still having the time problem.

[Shuffle]

try setting the proper time in the bios (as close as you can), i know that same thing happens with windows updates

[dtoliaferro]

try setting the proper time in the bios (as close as you can), i know that same thing happens with windows updates

Ah, it turns out my system time was out of date by a whole day. I swear it wasn't yesterday, but my system did just update so maybe that was it.

Looks like everything is back to normal now. Thanks for all your help guys!