Recover Old Wallet?

[ddo]

Hey guys,

I was wondering if I could recover an old wallet that I used to mine on around 2 years ago. Here is my situation:

2 years ago I mined and saved up some coins, but now when I reinstalled bitcoin (on the same computer) my wallet is actually a different address. I do not have a backup (or the one I had apparently has no coins), but I remember the pool I mined on, and I have my address and blockexplorer.com shows the transactions I received back then. Is there any way to recover my old wallet...?

Any answer is much appreciated!
Thanks

[Stephen Gornick]

now when I reinstalled bitcoin (on the same computer) my wallet is actually a different address.

Just to clarify, with the Bitcoin.org client you don't have "an address", you have a wallet that contains many addresses.  Each time you click Receive money a new address is generated.  So just seeing a new address doesn't mean anything

Also, installing the client again doesn't overwrite or replace an existing wallet.dat

The wallet.dat contains the private key for each address in the wallet.  Without those private keys, you can't spend the funds.   

I do not have a backup (or the one I had apparently has no coins),

You can click on the Transactions tab to see all activity that occurred.  If it shows no activity at all, then for whatever reason it is currently an empty wallet.

Also, until the blockchain sync has completed, your balance shown by the client may not show properly.

[ddo]

Thank you for the reply.

So I reinstalled the client and after it synced it still comes up empty, showing no transactions, even though I can see the transactions on blockexplorer.com. Are there any other options to retrieve my lost coins?

[Stephen Gornick]

Thank you for the reply.

So I reinstalled the client and after it synced it still comes up empty, showing no transactions, even though I can see the transactions on blockexplorer.com.

When you say your wallet "is a different address", ... but a wallet has many addresses, probably means you have an empty wallet with only one address.

That you have a client that has synced but shows no transactions kind of confirms that.

I do not have a backup

That is unfortunate.  You never made any backups of your wallet anywhere?

[janspambox]

Is there any way to recover my old wallet...?

There is/was a wallet.dat with your private key somewhere. If you didn't make copies, you need to find the original. If the original is gone, the BTC are gone (well, they are still there, but they can never be accessed again because the key to do so is lost).

Have you considered searching your entire hard drive for wallet.dat in case the installations use different paths for some reason? (Different user accounts perhaps?)

[Meizirkki]

Your wallet is forever gone if you've formatted your hard drive, deleted your home directory or otherwise damaged the wallet.dat file (not sure if uninstalling bitcoin-qt does this?)