Using old version 0.5.18 and trying to load a wallet

[Pennies4Sale]

On an old version, 0.5.18 on Windows 64 and I am trying to load a wallet with a .wallet file from about a week ago in the rolling backups folder, but I keep getting an error, "Could not load the wallet file.......Error message was "null."" Do I need to put the file in a specific location or do I need to update my client first? I have made copies of all of my wallet files.

I'm not sure what other information would be useful to you, but let me know what else you might need to know and I'll provide it. I'm very new to this and obviously it's been a while since I messed around with it since I am on such an old client version. I'll be updating as soon as I get this all figured out.

Thank you in advance.

[HI-TEC99]

Try downloading the latest wallet version from here.

https://multibit.org/releases/multibit-classic/multibit-classic-0.5.19/multibit-classic-windows-x64-0.5.19.exe

Put it in a new folder called MultiBitClassicPortable0519 in your C: drive, then make it a portable app by creating an empty file called multibit.properties with notepad, and placing that into the same folder as multibit-classic-windows-x64-0.5.19.exe

When creating multibit.properties make sure you select "all files" for its type, not txt. This screenshot shows how.



Afterwards run multibit-classic-windows-x64-0.5.19.exe and install multibit into your MultiBitClassicPortable0519 folder like in the screenshot.



Put your backed up wallet file into that folder.

Double click multibit-classic.exe inside the new folder to start multibit.

When it's running select file, then open wallet, then browse to your backed up wallet file.

Hopefully your new portable multibit should be able to open it without errors.



Did you also make a backup of a file with a .key extension?

If you did and it's not password protected you can open it in notepad and get your private key. In the example file below the private key is the bit in red.

# KEEP YOUR PRIVATE KEYS SAFE !
# Anyone who can read this file can spend your bitcoin.
#
# Format:
#   <Base58 encoded private key>[<whitespace>[<key createdAt>]]
#
#   The Base58 encoded private keys are the same format as
#   produced by the Satoshi client/ sipa dumpprivkey utility.
#
#   Key createdAt is in UTC format as specified by ISO 8601
#   e.g: 2011-12-31T16:42:00Z . The century, 'T' and 'Z' are mandatory
#
KwUVsx4nd4UTHUtNTPnLEEqapCFvNiBrVASBZPa1ZvStQbUD87VK 2017-03-26T01:36:45Z
# End of private keys

If it's encrypted you can still get the private key, but it's more complicated. These instructions should work.

Download this and extract it.

https://indy.fulgan.com/SSL/openssl-1.0.2k-x64_86-win64.zip

Put the extracted folder in your C: drive root folder.

Put your encrypted wallet file in the same folder.

Open the windows command prompt by selecting run as administrator.

Type the line below into it and press your enter key/

cd /openssl-1.0.2k-x64_86-win64

Type the line below into it, but replace Untitled.key with your encrypted key file's name and password with your password, then press enter.

openssl enc -d -p -aes-256-cbc -a -in Untitled.key -out Unencrypted.txt -pass pass:password

Open the newly created Unencrypted.txt file in notepad to get your private key.

In the example file below the private key is the bit in red.

L128BoWxZoAixtYTRRvm7BF686Jxmsf7W3LAiKY5Gu43o94LRNbw 2017-03-26T01:53:30Z

[Pennies4Sale]

Thank you so much for instructions even a newbie should be able to follow. I'll try it out tomorrow.

Cheers.

[Pennies4Sale]

I believe I followed the instructions step-by-step, but I still get the same error when trying to open the wallet.

Just to be clear, the multibit.properties empty text document should just be sitting in my MultibitClassicPortable0519 folder in my C Drive?
I don't actually know what this does because I know very little about computers, in general, so I just want to make sure.

Thanks again.

[HI-TEC99]

I believe I followed the instructions step-by-step, but I still get the same error when trying to open the wallet.

Just to be clear, the multibit.properties empty text document should just be sitting in my MultibitClassicPortable0519 folder in my C Drive?
I don't actually know what this does because I know very little about computers, in general, so I just want to make sure.

Thanks again.

Yes, that's where to put it. After you run your new portable multibit wallet for the first time it should fill that blank file with portable app settings. Multibit automatically recognises it and goes into portable app mode if it's blank.

If it's still blank after running multibit portable for the first time there's been some problem, otherwise it's working.

It's normally possible to import a .wallet file by itself, but ideally it should have a corresponding .info file and folder ending in -data.

If your wallet is called Untitled.wallet it's best to also move the Untitled.info file and the Untitled-data folder to whatever folder Untitled.wallet is in.

Was your .wallet file encrypted or unencrypted? Did you add a password to it?

[Pennies4Sale]

EDIT: oh, hold on, it seems to be opening another .WALLET file (I don't think my BTC will be in this one), but it's working for a file from the day prior for some reason. I have to wait for it to sync up, and I'll let you know how it goes. (not sure why it won't open the file I actually want to open)

-------------------------

I just moved the multibit.properties notepad file into the downloaded "Multibit Classic" folder and ran multibitclassic.exe. It worked and filled in the file, finally giving me a welcome screen when I ran the program.

I have .WALLET, .INFO, and .KEY files for each backup. (other than the most recent one from a week ago, for some strange reason, there is just the .WALLET file)
-They were all contained in a multibit-data folder in Users/[user]/appdata/roaming/multibit

I just tried moving the entire multibit-data folder, a copy of the .WALLET file, and a copy of the corresponding .INFO file into the downloaded "Multibit Classic" folder as well, but again, after trying to OPEN WALLET, it gave me the same error.

I had to enter a password to use my wallet if that is what you mean. (Forgive me, I'm not sure if that means it was actually encrypted or not.)

I did not take the steps to find the private key because it sounds like something is going wrong before that step.

Thank again.

*Be sure to post or message me your BTC address so that if I figure this out, I can send you a few bucks for helping me out. I don't have much, but I really appreciate it.*

[HI-TEC99]

If you had to enter a password to use your wallet it must have been encrypted.

There is software available that cracks password protected multibit .wallet files. If you already have the password it should quickly recover your keys. However I have no experience of using it, and if your .wallet file is corrupted that software probably can't recover any private keys from it.

This guy developed it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1171

These are the download and installation instructions.

https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md

This is a quick start guide.

https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md#btcrecover-tutorial

My Bitcoin address is in my profile

[Pennies4Sale]

Unfortunately the only .wallet file that I really need to open gives me the same error that I have been getting. There is no .info or .key file associated with it. I suppose whatever went wrong last week didn't allow for those to be saved. I'm not sure what else to do.

[HI-TEC99]

Does it give that error in multibit or btcrecover? Try using btcrecover if you haven't already done so.

I think the btcrecover software only needs a .wallet file to work on. It can probably recover private keys without associated .info or .key files. It's worth trying, the worst that can happen is it can't recover your key, and if you get lucky it might get it back.

[vanupied]

Unfortunately the only .wallet file that I really need to open gives me the same error that I have been getting. There is no .info or .key file associated with it. I suppose whatever went wrong last week didn't allow for those to be saved. I'm not sure what else to do.

Did you find a way to make it work? I've been playing with Multibit 0.5.18 lately with a bit of success (and some luck I must admit).