I just learned about Electrum wallet and was told it's very useful. Gone to the home page and there were 3 downloads option. The most striking option is the "Portable" version.
As there is no description on that download page, I assumed this version is the one without the whole chain of ledger needed to be synced with my machine, hence I go for that.
No. Electrum by itself is an SPV wallet. Every version you download will not require the client to synchronize to the full blockchain.
1st problem: During installation, it gave me this error:
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
Runtime Error!
R6034
An application has made an attempt to load the C runtime library incorrectly.
(I did not copied my own exact error, but above was copied from somewhere over the net, which looks similar.)
Weird, never had this problem before. Could you give us the full error?
After installation, I can't find the wallet file, which was told to be supposedly at:
UsersYourUserNameAppDataRoamingElectrumwallets
But there is nothing there. I can't even see the directory being created.
That is only for the "Windows Installer" and "Standalone Executable". For the portable version, a folder is created in the place where you store the portable version a folder called "Electrum_data" is created when the wallet is created.
So, without a documentation to understand what is this wallet or what are the differences between the wallets, I don't dare to start using. Listed are 3 downloads but without any single explanation at all (refering to windows):
Standalone Executable (signature)
Windows Installer (signature)
Portable version (signature) (security advice)
The standalone executable is basically the entire Electrum and its dependencies shrunk into an executable. The wallet file is saved in %appdata%\Electrum\Wallets. The windows installer installs the Electrum into Program Files and the directory is the same. The portable version is nearly the same as the standalone executable except that the wallet file and the blockheaders are saved in the same directory as the portable executable.
2. An explanation on the file structure, focusing on where and how to save/backup/protect the wallet file. BTW, what is the filename of the Electrum wallet file?
Look above. The filename by default is default_wallet and Electrum will attempt to find it when it starts up.
3. Or do I really need to backup the wallet file here since Electrum is implementing the seed for recovery?
No the seeds recover the entire wallet, there is no need. But at the same time, no harm done if you decide to back it up.
Let me know if you don't understand anything.
