Problem with bitcoin transaction, stupidly enough forgot to include a fee

[2RobPet]

Hello.

I tried to send some bitcoin on friday, and after waiting for some days it has still not gone through. I have realized that it is probably due to me not including a fee. There might also be another problem, I now see that i am running quite an old version of Bitcoin QT. Would anyone be kind enough to explain what options I have here? The transaction is completely uncorfirmed, and it does not show up in any of the search engines I have tried. Withdrawing btc from bitfinex to the wallet worked fine btw. I have understood that it might be possible to have the network "forget" the transaction, but will this work when bitcoin qt is still casting the transaction? I am sorry about the noobishness here. At this point my main concern is to not lose the btc, and ideally be able to do a successful transaction as fast as possible.

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: Bitcoin qt v 4.8.3     Bitcoin v 0.8.3-beta (really afraid this might be a concern?)
Transaction ID: 9a97eec93b711ae28f078cc7e62673906a0e5b4df18e7b91ff63727b8e40e96b-000   Sending to address: 17s76okR5MbYCiEn42f4a6SrgW29HMeGtK

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[erikalui]

I can't find any transaction to the address "17s76okR5MbYCiEn42f4a6SrgW29HMeGtK" (it says "No transactions found for this address, it has probably not been used on the network yet." and the transaction ID too is not valid. Did you enter a low fee while sending this transaction or no fee at all?

[HI-TEC99]

Bitcoin qt will keep rebroadcasting the transaction if it's connected to the internet. The first thing you need to do is switch off your internet connection if you want the network to forget your transaction. After that follow the instructions in this quote to force your wallet to forget the transaction.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1914748.msg18995160#msg18995160

If you can turn off or block your internet connection, then you can open up your wallet and use the "abandon transaction" to get Bitcoin Core to forget about it (in which case the bitcoins will instantly re-appear in your wallet.

If abandon transaction doesn't work, then you can start up your wallet from a command line with the -zapwallettxes command line option to get your wallet to forget about the transaction.

Once the wallet has forgotten about the original transaction, then you can re-enable your internet connection and will have access to create and broadcast a new transaction using those bitcoins if you want to.

After that you can switch your internet connection back on

edit

Like erikalui I can't find any transactions for the address 17s76okR5MbYCiEn42f4a6SrgW29HMeGtK in any of the well known block explorers.

If your transaction propagated at all not many nodes have seen it. After you remove the transaction from your wallet you should have no problem sending another with the correct fees.

[2RobPet]

Thanks for the answers. I did not include a fee at all. To be able to abort the transaction through the program, it seems that I have to upgrade bitcoin core. Any risk involved with this? I created the backup .dat file with my old version. Another question, will the transaction be completely aborted, and the btc become available again for a completely new transaction? I'm asking because the price is quite much higher now than when I originally tried to do the transaction. Thanks again guys.

[HI-TEC99]

If you are using Bitcoin v 0.8.3-beta then it's out of date. It might produce transactions that are no longer compatible with the Bitcoin network. It's because of s values in signatures.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0062.mediawiki#low-s-values-in-signatures

You can upgrade to the latest version, but syncing and reindexing will take a long time. If you want fast access to your coins I would install electrum, then export your private keys from your Qt wallet, and import them into electrum using these instructions.

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#can-i-import-private-keys-from-other-bitcoin-clients

It should sync almost immediately, and your coins should be immediately spendable from it.

[2RobPet]

Ok thanks, I might try that. But if I choose to upgrade bitcoin core/qt, would I be able to cancel the original transaction that way, or would the transaction being made with an old version preventing it from being cancelled somehow?

[2RobPet]

Solved it. Updated bitcoin core to the latest version, set the data directory to the same as my old version so I didn't have to redownload the blockchain, then cancelled the transaction with the abandon transaction function. Transaction sent and confirmed now.

[rahmat92]

In your case the server may be serving another transaction so that your transaction can not be served,
But do not worry, I am sure that your bitcoin will not be lost, you just send a message to the admin so that your transaction in speed up its process
Pray and be patient