Forgot I had an old Electrum account, big problems now

[Toma212]

I installed Electrum a while ago and since I never used it, I deleted it together with all my seed names and all info, and even lost the Google Authenticator code after getting a new smartphone.

I just reinstalled Electrum to withdraw some money from a gambling website but when I tried to redeposit it somewhere else all of a sudden it asked me for a Google Authenticator code...
Is it possible to retrieve any of my info or did I just waste a lot of money?  All I have is the app running on my PC and my password.

[1713587147]

1713587147

[1713587147]

1713587147

[Toma212]

Just to clarify - when I installed Electrum again today, I was automatically logged in and I completely forgot that I am working with an account I don't have the info to anymore.

I tried changing the password to blank to decrypt the seed or something like that ( read it somewhere on the forum ) but the "Seed" button was still gray and I couldn't do anything with it.

If someone could walk me through this with baby steps, I would appreciate it a whole lot.

[Cereberus]

If you have the app running on your PC and password then use that password in order to make the Seed button green. Click on it and it will reveal the seed.

In case you have 2FA activated and lost the authenticator code the only way to restore this is:

If when you set up your 2FA you had a code like this 2FDADFNADFIDAIDFOAIO37 (this is example) and with this code you can disable 2FA and start back over.

I am afraid not much you can do if you have lost that kind of code used to disable manually the 2FA.

Anyway someone else more knowledgeable than me might help you.

[Toma212]

Okay, so from what I managed to find on forums, if I had my seed I could basically open a new wallet with it and all of my funds would automatically be transferred there thus avoiding the 2FA problem.

However, I can't seem to get the "Seed" button to be clickable in Electrum. I decrypted the account by leaving the field "New Password" blank, but the button is still gray and unclickable.

[Abdussamad]

Okay, so from what I managed to find on forums, if I had my seed I could basically open a new wallet with it and all of my funds would automatically be transferred there thus avoiding the 2FA problem.

However, I can't seem to get the "Seed" button to be clickable in Electrum. I decrypted the account by leaving the field "New Password" blank, but the button is still gray and unclickable.

edit: uninstalling electrum does not delete your wallet. when you reinstalled electrum it picked up your old wallet and showed it to you. then you received money to that wallet but now you can't spend it because its a 2fa wallet and you don't have the 2fa code for it anymore. the reason the seed button is grayed out is probably because 2fa wallets don't store the full seed. what does it say in the window title?

[Toma212]

Okay, so from what I managed to find on forums, if I had my seed I could basically open a new wallet with it and all of my funds would automatically be transferred there thus avoiding the 2FA problem.

However, I can't seem to get the "Seed" button to be clickable in Electrum. I decrypted the account by leaving the field "New Password" blank, but the button is still gray and unclickable.

edit: uninstalling electrum does not delete your wallet. when you reinstalled electrum it picked up your old wallet and showed it to you. then you received money to that wallet but now you can't spend it because its a 2fa wallet and you don't have the 2fa code for it anymore. the reason the seed button is grayed out is probably because 2fa wallets don't store the full seed. what does it say in the window title?

Electrum 2.7.15 - default_wallet [2fa]

Is there anything I can do with my bitcoins then?

[kolloh]

Okay, so from what I managed to find on forums, if I had my seed I could basically open a new wallet with it and all of my funds would automatically be transferred there thus avoiding the 2FA problem.

However, I can't seem to get the "Seed" button to be clickable in Electrum. I decrypted the account by leaving the field "New Password" blank, but the button is still gray and unclickable.

edit: uninstalling electrum does not delete your wallet. when you reinstalled electrum it picked up your old wallet and showed it to you. then you received money to that wallet but now you can't spend it because its a 2fa wallet and you don't have the 2fa code for it anymore. the reason the seed button is grayed out is probably because 2fa wallets don't store the full seed. what does it say in the window title?

Electrum 2.7.15 - default_wallet [2fa]

Is there anything I can do with my bitcoins then?

Without the saved seed or the 2FA, I'm not sure you'll be able to regain access to the funds in that wallet. You don't have a backup of your phone that might contain the 2FA do you?

For more information on how the 2FA works in Electrum, check out http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/2fa.html .

According to TrustedCoin ( the service used for 2FA ), if you lose your cell phone your only option is to recover your funds using your backup key.

[Abdussamad]

kolloh is right. you need the 2fa code or the seed. it seems you have neither of those.

In order to help you I created a 2fa wallet to learn more about the process. I found out that you have to share an email address with trusted coin when creating a wallet. Maybe trusted coin can help you if you contact them using the email address you originally gave them when creating your wallet? It's worth a try.