Why does the electrum install wizard keep coming up

[TomPlatz]

I had been using Electrum for 6 months and has been working fantastic, then quite out of the blue I went in to the sending tab to set up a bitcoin transfer, something odd in that send tab page was a lined frame around the lower half of the window (something to do with invoices?) which from memory is normally blank, never seen that before, set up the normal send details and clicked send, but it didnt do anything. Exited electrum, restarted and a different window came up "Electrum - Install Wizard" telling me my default_wallet was enrypted and to enter the password (should already know that, I set it up), I do that and click next, nothing happens, hangs there forever.
Unintall electrum, remove the electrum data files by hand manually, check for viruses, restart the PC.
Install electrum, enter the seed and password, going again, electrum very slow to update from the servers but eventually shows my bitcoin. Great. Lets re-test it.
Exit electrum re-start electrum, pops up the same install wizard window telling me the default_wallet is encrypted, entered the password for it again and clicked next, then it hangs again doing nothing.
Why is that install wizard coming up after I have fully installed correctly, why might it hang? I've not installed anything else that may have interfered with it.
Is there a log that could have recorded something?
Latest version, fairly new Xeon PC, tons of ram. I keep checking for viruses and reinstalling electrum but always now same result.
5 full removal and install attempts, installs seem to work each time and seems usable if I do not exit that first start up but always a restart has this bizzare problem and it wont go.
All other software works well, I have had to switch to Exodus just so I can have a working wallet.
I like Electrum because of the replace by fee and custom fee features, got to have it back.
Any Ideas what the hell is going on ?

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[mindrust]

Antivirus programs do not recognize every PC virus out there. There are many viruses which aren't recognized yet. I am not saying your PC is infected but there is a possibility.

Since you got your seed and pass, i suggest you to try it on another PC or better yet, install Virtual Machine and setup another windows and try it there and see if it does the trick. You'll probably end up with formatting your PC.

If there was something wrong with electrum, electrum subforum would have gone crazy already. It is your PC.

[HCP]

You mean this one right?



that is "normal"... it is a poorly named dialog, but it will come up everytime you start Electrum... it is really just the password entry screen for your wallet

Not sure why it is "hanging" after you enter your password though... is your wallet really massive or something? Do you have thousands and thousands of transactions in it? Did you set it up to put your wallet on low speed storage like a usb thumb drive or something? or maybe it is a hardware issue and your hard drive is failing?

[kolloh]

Yeah, that is just the password entry for your wallet. The dialog is just misnamed as it isn't an install wizard haha.

How long have you let Electrum sit after entering the password and pressing next? My wallet comes up almost immediately after entering the password. I'm assuming you are running version 2.8.2, right? If not, please try updating to see if it fixes the issue.

[TomPlatz]

You mean this one right?

https://i.imgur.com/fZcEfW1.png

that is "normal"... it is a poorly named dialog, but it will come up everytime you start Electrum... it is really just the password entry screen for your wallet

Not sure why it is "hanging" after you enter your password though... is your wallet really massive or something? Do you have thousands and thousands of transactions in it? Did you set it up to put your wallet on low speed storage like a usb thumb drive or something? or maybe it is a hardware issue and your hard drive is failing?

Yes that is the dialog window and the last million times I started Electrum after the initial setup (when it was working normally), this window never came up. Are you saying that this always comes up for you each time you start it?, well it never used to for me it just went straight into the main interface until a couple of days ago.
Something very odd about that, I dont see the need for the dialog since I used to get asked my password when I sent each transaction.

[TomPlatz]

Yeah, that is just the password entry for your wallet. The dialog is just misnamed as it isn't an install wizard haha.

How long have you let Electrum sit after entering the password and pressing next? My wallet comes up almost immediately after entering the password. I'm assuming you are running version 2.8.2, right? If not, please try updating to see if it fixes the issue.

Yes I have the latest version prior to the issue and tried downloading the same version again and tried that.
Apparently the window that pops up (above post) is normal and my assumption is that it comes up each time you start it by what you guys are saying, well on my PC and another PC I just retired it does not, same version (before the issue arose) Electrum would start up into the main interface only. I get asked for a wallet password when I send Bitcoin out

[HCP]

You'll probably find that it is because this time you left the "Encrypt Wallet" option checked when setting the wallet password. If the wallet is encrypted, you need the password to decrypt it before the program can read it

if it isn't encrypted, the main interface comes up straight away, but you obviously need the password to sign transactions etc (keys are always encrypted, regardless of whether or not the wallet file is)

If you goto: Wallet -> Password... put in a new password and uncheck the "Encrypt Wallet" and then restart, you'll find it won't come up with the "Install Wizard"

[TomPlatz]

You'll probably find that it is because this time you left the "Encrypt Wallet" option checked when setting the wallet password. If the wallet is encrypted, you need the password to decrypt it before the program can read it

if it isn't encrypted, the main interface comes up straight away, but you obviously need the password to sign transactions etc (keys are always encrypted, regardless of whether or not the wallet file is)

If you goto: Wallet -> Password... put in a new password and uncheck the "Encrypt Wallet" and then restart, you'll find it won't come up with the "Install Wizard"

Thank you for the assistance and your above comment appears to be correct.

Getting back to the problem of a non starting / hanging / acting weird Electrum wallet, I pulled everything out again and started fresh, paid for Malwarebytes because I freaked out but really there is no virus.
My hunch of what the problem is I think relates to my usage of Electrum.
Electrum is perfect for what I do, it has a non-pansy display with just text and has the features I need to push transactions thru faster and I can see what is going on with them within the app.

My usage involves trading, all day, every day, and in the past two months there would be, god knows how many, back and forth transactions with Electrum with just the one wallet.
I did some testing of a new install of Electrum and let it give me a new seed of words, Electrum works fine, opens, syncs, exits, just like before.
I then created a new wallet with the current install and gave it my original seed, totally different story in the way electrum works.

New Electrum wallet = 2KB in size

My problem Original wallet = 8983KB found out after it finished a new sync that it stores a ton of crap, I assume this will just try to get bigger.

I think this has something to do with the problem.

I have also noticed that Electrum struggles to open or show any window when starting up if that large wallet file resides in the wallet directory, as if it is doing some sort of pre-opening of each wallet to check what format they are perhaps. When I delete the large wallet, that issue goes away.
If the original wallet file has never synced before, electrum of course will open as the file starts life as only 2KB but once it has synced, if I re-start electrum, bang, it hates that big file then.

While I have a ton of Ram, 64Gb in a new Dual Xeon, the problem seems to relate to how the software is coping with tons of data, obviously wants to load the whole lot.

This tends to be somewhat disappointing as I feel that what is happening here for me is that I will get maybe two months of trading and then have to create a fresh wallet of addresses and swap to that.
Its annoying because there are backup printouts to change, addresses on other sites sending to my wallet to change.
Not convenient but to keep the features Electrum offers I will put up with that and just do regular wallet changes, perhaps using a date range as the name of the wallet file.
I do wonder how other wallets handle high usage or perhaps they do not try to join the dots so to speak and do not try to load past events.

To tell the truth I am pretty happy I discovered this and I can go on using it knowing it's got limits.


Comments ?

[TomPlatz]

Thinking further is there a function or can we add a function to trim the saved history to a user nominated value, say "keep last 20 transactions" and then the file gets trimmed.
Not sure if such a thing is possible.

[ranochigo]

Thinking further is there a function or can we add a function to trim the saved history to a user nominated value, say "keep last 20 transactions" and then the file gets trimmed.
Not sure if such a thing is possible.

Not possible. Electrum has to use your transaction history to calculate your address balance and script the transaction. If you were to prune the transactions, Electrum has to query the servers repeatedly and this is rather inefficient.

If you have such a powerful rig, you should consider a full node, like Bitcoin Core. Unlike Electrum, it doesn't have to query the servers which creates a bottleneck. By doing this, you are also helping to save the resources that would otherwise be used. Electrum is honestly not designed for heavy usage.

[TomPlatz]

Thinking further is there a function or can we add a function to trim the saved history to a user nominated value, say "keep last 20 transactions" and then the file gets trimmed.
Not sure if such a thing is possible.

Not possible. Electrum has to use your transaction history to calculate your address balance and script the transaction. If you were to prune the transactions, Electrum has to query the servers repeatedly and this is rather inefficient.

If you have such a powerful rig, you should consider a full node, like Bitcoin Core. Unlike Electrum, it doesn't have to query the servers which creates a bottleneck. By doing this, you are also helping to save the resources that would otherwise be used. Electrum is honestly not designed for heavy usage.

Yes but Bitcoin core does not have built in re-broadcast and the layout of Core is woeful. I do use it but, terrible really.

I thought an electrum transaction prune could happen if it totals up the ones it prunes and puts that in the file as a subtotal and then works with that and the handful of latest transactions. If past transactions are done and dusted, obviously they cannot change so it should be ok to represent the past as an added up subtotal, I assume if one were to kill the file for some reason and have to start over it again would repopulate the file with all the transactions by syncing and again do a prune to cut it back.
For a pruned file the sync would see the date stamp of the prune and where to start looking.

Damn.

[ranochigo]

Yes but Bitcoin core does not have built in re-broadcast and the layout of Core is woeful. I do use it but, terrible really.

I thought an electrum transaction prune could happen if it totals up the ones it prunes and puts that in the file as a subtotal and then works with that and the handful of latest transactions. If past transactions are done and dusted, obviously they cannot change so it should be ok to represent the past as an added up subtotal, I assume if one were to kill the file for some reason and have to start over it again would repopulate the file with all the transactions by syncing and again do a prune to cut it back.
For a pruned file the sync would see the date stamp of the prune and where to start looking.

Damn.

Bitcoin Core rebroadcasts transaction automatically and its pretty flexible with the features.

The way most desktop wallet works is to download and verify the transactions associated with the wallet and get the UXTO. This way, when you make a transaction, the client don't have to ask the nodes "Hey which inputs can I spend?" and your client would have to verify it again. If you think about it, it would put a lot more stress on the nodes and your computer.

I would imagine it could be possible for the client to prune the transactions which their outputs spent. I'm not really familiar with the feasibility of this however.

[Abdussamad]

Thinking further is there a function or can we add a function to trim the saved history to a user nominated value, say "keep last 20 transactions" and then the file gets trimmed.
Not sure if such a thing is possible.

You have to create a new wallet. That is a completely new set of addresses and a different seed. Electrum just isn't designed for massive wallets. After you have properly created the new wallet, including noting  down its seed, you should send your money from the old wallet to the new one.

You can create a new wallet using file > new/restore. You can open specific wallets using file > open or the command line switch -w

Code:

electrum -w /path/to/walletfile

[HCP]

Yeah... I was going to suggest a similar setup... create a new wallet for each month (201701-wallet, 201702-wallet, 201703-wallet, 201704-wallet etc), then forward the balance from previous month to the current months wallet... and so on and so on...

A bit of a nuisance that you can't store it all in one wallet, but with the added bonus being that you get "monthly statements"

Seriously tho, a "light weight" SPV wallet is probably not what you should be using if you are generating that many transactions... I would have thought that running a full node with Bitcoin Core would be a more robust solution.

[vtsupertramp]

I have the same thing pop up but right after installing I haven't made a wallet on electrum    that is the first screen when I first opened program   I deleted everything and tried again am I missing something please help   thanks

[HCP]

I have the same thing pop up but right after installing I haven't made a wallet on electrum    that is the first screen when I first opened program   I deleted everything and tried again am I missing something please help   thanks

But that is what it is supposed to do after installing... you need to create a wallet.

If you're saying it is actually asking for a password, then it would appear you've already used Electrum before and there is already a "default wallet". Electrum stores the user data and wallets in %appdata%\Electrum (on Windows this is usually something like C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Electrum)

NOTE: If you can't find the AppData directory, it'll be because it is hidden by default. Instructions for showing hidden files/folders: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files

I suggest that you backup the "wallets" folder (just in case you actually have some BTC in there already)... then just delete the entire %AppData%\Electrum folder and then start Electrum. It should recreate the folders and start the "first run" wizard that lets you create a new wallet.