Am I screwed?

[Le_rote]

So I dloaded Electrum last week and for the second time already it is not recognizing my password.

I am trying to send my BTC and it stubbornly tells me my password is incorrect when I am 100% certain it is correct. I used it just last night.

This happened the very first night I used this wallet (!) and I assumed it was a mistake on my part and used the seed to recover the account.

However, now it has happened AGAIN and I cannot use the seed option again because it didn't occur to me that a new one had been generated when I opened the new wallet. (I assumed, a little unwisely, that the original seed was kept because it did not ask me to write down a new one.)

Is this a known problem with Electrum? And what can I do about it now? Is there a developer I can contact about this directly? My coins are stuck in that wallet through no fault of my own. I looked on the website but could see no contact address.

Thanks in advance guys.

[mocacinno]

So I dloaded Electrum last week and for the second time already it is not recognizing my password.

I am trying to send my BTC and it stubbornly tells me my password is incorrect when I am 100% certain it is correct. I used it just last night.

This happened the very first night I used this wallet (!) and I assumed it was a mistake on my part and used the seed to recover the account.

However, now it has happened AGAIN and I cannot use the seed option again because it didn't occur to me that a new one had been generated when I opened the new wallet. (I assumed, a little unwisely, that the original seed was kept because it did not ask me to write down a new one.)

Is this a known problem with Electrum? And what can I do about it now? Is there a developer I can contact about this directly? My coins are stuck in that wallet through no fault of my own. I looked on the website but could see no contact address.

Thanks in advance guys.

ThomasV is the developer of Electrum. You can send him a PM on bitcointalk, but i'm pretty sure he'll notice this topic pretty soon (he's rather active on the forum).
Please, beare in mind he's offering a free, open source, tool... Since he doesn't get payed for the (in my opinion) great work he does, please be patient when waiting if he can help you out

As for your problem, the things i could imagine happening is: maybe you're opening your old wallet with your new password? Maybe the keyboard map has changed? Other than that, i can't think of anything else.

I've been using electrum since version 2.4, never had any problems... This doesn't mean bug are not possible... I just never had any problems creating transactions, signing, or broadcasting

[Le_rote]

Well, that's strange.

The reason I assumed a new seed had been generated was because when I used the original seed to recover my 2nd wallet it made a 3rd wallet with a balance of 0. So I figured Wallet_2 had a different seed.

But I just tried again in a desperate attempt and my balance has been restored. Hmmm.

I suppose from now on I won't use a password, as this seems to be a problem a number of people have encountered. Or would that be a bad idea?

I like Electrum and would like to keep using it, but it seems a little volatile.

[mocacinno]

Well, that's strange.

The reason I assumed a new seed had been generated was because when I used the original seed to recover my 2nd wallet it made a 3rd wallet with a balance of 0. So I figured Wallet_2 had a different seed.

But I just tried again in a desperate attempt and my balance has been restored. Hmmm.

I suppose from now on I won't use a password, as this seems to be a problem a number of people have encountered. Or would that be a bad idea?

I like Electrum and would like to keep using it, but it seems a little volatile.

I'm a bit confused here...
Can you tell us witch wallets you have in your wallet folder (usually C:\Users\[youruser]\AppData\Roaming\Electrum\wallets)

As far as i can tell now, you have 3 wallets, 2 seeds and one password?
I guess you could try to open them one by one, at least see wich one actually controlls addresses having inputs, and see if their passwords work?

It might be a good start to backup your wallet files, seed phrases and password, and try to find out which of the wallets are actually used, and which ones are empty...

[Coin-Keeper]

If you are using Electrum with a hot/online wallet it is virtually imperative that you use a password.  The wallet password will encrypt your seed.  Should your online computer get hacked and you have Electrum with no password, then your seed is sitting wide open.  If someone gets your seed they have all your coins.  Period.

By the way, if you open an Electrum wallet and enter your password AND then can see your seed you KNOW you have the right password!

[socks435]

What version of wallet do you download and use? do you use portable electrum before and install an electrum installer?
Because i experience it.
If you install electrum before make sure you deleted also the folder in c://...appdata/local
Also try to use iobit installer to uninstall the electrum and deleted all files traces..  and restart try to install again and make your wallet save seeds and important when you are making account again in electrum..

Pm me about iobit installer..

[ThomasV]

if you created your wallet a long time ago, you might have this issue:
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/1967
I fixed it yesterday, will do another release today.

[Le_rote]

Well, that's strange.

The reason I assumed a new seed had been generated was because when I used the original seed to recover my 2nd wallet it made a 3rd wallet with a balance of 0. So I figured Wallet_2 had a different seed.

But I just tried again in a desperate attempt and my balance has been restored. Hmmm.

I suppose from now on I won't use a password, as this seems to be a problem a number of people have encountered. Or would that be a bad idea?

I like Electrum and would like to keep using it, but it seems a little volatile.

I'm a bit confused here...
Can you tell us witch wallets you have in your wallet folder (usually C:\Users\[youruser]\AppData\Roaming\Electrum\wallets)

As far as i can tell now, you have 3 wallets, 2 seeds and one password?
I guess you could try to open them one by one, at least see wich one actually controlls addresses having inputs, and see if their passwords work?

It might be a good start to backup your wallet files, seed phrases and password, and try to find out which of the wallets are actually used, and which ones are empty...

Sorry, re-reading my comment I see it didn't make much sense.

I had my first wallet (wallet_default) which had the seed 'floppy tuna treadmill...' etc. I put BTC into it.  A couple hours after setting this up my password stopped being recognized. So I recovered the seed and got wallet_2, with the correct BTC balance.

A week later the password stopped working again so I tried using the same seed again to get a 3rd wallet. But the wallet_3 had 0 balance so I assumed that wallet_2 must have generated a new seed and I would need that to recover it. (Never bothered to check)

But then I tried one more time--again with the original seed-- and the new wallet had the balance of wallet_2. So it didn't have a new seed after all.

Now I'm just not using a password. The password I used previously was the same across all wallets.

[mocacinno]

Well, that's strange.

The reason I assumed a new seed had been generated was because when I used the original seed to recover my 2nd wallet it made a 3rd wallet with a balance of 0. So I figured Wallet_2 had a different seed.

But I just tried again in a desperate attempt and my balance has been restored. Hmmm.

I suppose from now on I won't use a password, as this seems to be a problem a number of people have encountered. Or would that be a bad idea?

I like Electrum and would like to keep using it, but it seems a little volatile.

I'm a bit confused here...
Can you tell us witch wallets you have in your wallet folder (usually C:\Users\[youruser]\AppData\Roaming\Electrum\wallets)

As far as i can tell now, you have 3 wallets, 2 seeds and one password?
I guess you could try to open them one by one, at least see wich one actually controlls addresses having inputs, and see if their passwords work?

It might be a good start to backup your wallet files, seed phrases and password, and try to find out which of the wallets are actually used, and which ones are empty...

Sorry, re-reading my comment I see it didn't make much sense.

I had my first wallet (wallet_default) which had the seed 'floppy tuna treadmill...' etc. I put BTC into it.  A couple hours after setting this up my password stopped being recognized. So I recovered the seed and got wallet_2, with the correct BTC balance.

A week later the password stopped working again so I tried using the same seed again to get a 3rd wallet. But the wallet_3 had 0 balance so I assumed that wallet_2 must have generated a new seed and I would need that to recover it. (Never bothered to check)

But then I tried one more time--again with the original seed-- and the new wallet had the balance of wallet_2. So it didn't have a new seed after all.

Now I'm just not using a password. The password I used previously was the same across all wallets.

Strange stuff... The only thing i can think of is that when you generated wallet 3, you were connected to a lagging server or something else that blocked you from downloading the block headers...

Personally, i wouldn't run electrum without a password... Maybe you can try to upgrade to the latest version and try an easyer password? As long as you have the seed in a safe place, there isn't a lot that can go wrong. Worst case scenario, you can alway run a portable version of electrum with your saved on a friend's clean pc just to move your bitcoin if that's ever needed.