Transaction unconfirmed for indefinite time - FIX

[NickFill]

Hey all! So i've had this problem for a couple of days now which i have tried almost everything i found in these forums to no avail.
Finally i fixed it this morning and thought to share it with you, it might help some of you.

My issue, in summary, was that i sent an amount to another wallet with very low fee (i was oblivious to the effect of fees before this problem). Then the transaction was dropped the next day and i resent it with low fee again. The second transaction was stuck then. I was left waitting for 4 days, tried almost every solution i found, excluding purging the transaction via -zapwallettxes, reinstalled and recovered wallet after i deleted all files but nothing seemed to work.
Today, i thought of sending a small amount to myself to see if anything happens and to my surprise. the first (oldest) transaction which my wallet had shown as dropped was confirmed and the second attempt was marked as "double spent". I don't know how that happened but it worked. Hope it helps.

[ranochigo]

Your method can only work if a large portion of the network has already dropped your transaction from their mempool. Since the default policy is that they do not relay transactions that spends the same inputs as another transaction in their mempool/blockchain, they cannot accept your transaction unless its already dropped.

When majority of the network has dropped it, your transaction would have better propagation and miners would have a higher chance of seeing it. -zapwallettxes stops the rebroadcast in bitcoin core and it will help to get your transaction dropped.