Need Help Recovering Wallet

[btcking123]

I have a decent amount of bitcoins stored on my old macbook. Back in september, I broke the screen and my friend just finished replacing it but the computer does not boot so I decided to buy an external hard drive to back up all my files from my broken laptop. I stored all my bitcoins on multiple wallets on multibit classic. I just recovered all my files from my old hard drive but I can't seem to access my bitcoins. I never exported it as a .key but I have all the .wallet and the .info files. Can someone help me with this? I will give you a little tip in bitcoin. Thanks

[1714123393]

1714123393

[1714123393]

1714123393

[1714123393]

1714123393

[1714123393]

1714123393

[HI-TEC99]

Did you add a password to your wallet? If you didn't the instructions below might work. I tested them on windows because I don't have a mac. However, I think multibit uses the same format for wallet files on both windows and mac.

Although any hex editor should work the one I linked to in the quote has a mac version,

Since version 0.4.0 multibit classic wallet files are in a format called Google protocol buffer format (protobuf). Open a file with a .wallet extension in a hex editor and look for the following sequence of bytes 08 01 12 20. The next 32 bytes after that should be your private key in hex format. After you get your private key in hex format you can convert it to a normal format using an offline copy of the bitaddress website.

I tested this on an unencrypted wallet (one with no password) in multibit version 0.5.1.6 and it worked for me.

This is the hex editor I used, although any other is probably sufficient.

http://www.wxhexeditor.org/home.php

This is the bitaddress website. I advise you not to directly paste private keys into it.

https://www.bitaddress.org/

Instead look for this link at the bottom of the page and use it to download a zipped copy you can run offline.

https://github.com/pointbiz/bitaddress.org/archive/v3.3.0.zip



This is my multibit wallet file opened in the hex editor with the bytes 08 01 12 20 that precede a private key highlighted.






This is the 32 bytes of a private key (in hex format) highlighted.







This is the 32 bytes of a private key (in hex format) copied directly from the hex editor into notepad.






This is the 32 bytes of a private key after removing the spaces in notepad.






This is the private key copied from notepad and pasted into an offline copy of the bitaddress wedsite. Click the view details button to get the private key converted to normal formats.





This is my multibit wallet's address 1F84fkbMng6dJpGZmtycRbUe72B7XSYbeT shown on the right hand side of bitaddress. Every raw private key can convert into two different bitcoin addresses, which is why there's two.






This is my multibit wallet's address 1F84fkbMng6dJpGZmtycRbUe72B7XSYbeT shown in multibit.




You can import your private key into the wallet of your choice to get control of yours coins back. Electrum's a good choice.

If you install electrum you can use these instructions to import your private keys from multibit into it.

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

[HCP]

and if your wallet did have a password... I have written some python scripts that can extract keys from a MultiBit Classic .wallet file... available with instructions here: https://github.com/HardCorePawn/multibit_recovery

You would need to install Python and a couple of Python libraries... For added security, if you are able to, I'd suggest setting up a Virtual Machine and running the scripts inside the virtual machine with all the network adapters disabled so there is no chance your keys can get leaked.

The scripts have been tested on Windows 10, Linux and MacOSX

[btcking123]

Holy shit you guys are intense. Finally i figured out a simpler way to recover them.

1. Download multibit classic
2. Create a new wallet with the exact same name as your old wallet
3. delete the .info and .wallet of your new wallet
4. replace them with the ones of the wallet you're trying to recover
5. very long synching
6. works!!!!

No script needed or other crazy computer stuff, I'm really not that tech savvy when it comes to all those things you guys mentionned

[HCP]

Well there you go... well done!

I'll go and test that method and make sure it is repeatable... I'm assuming it is necessary to have both the .wallet AND the .info file to make it work... but I'll report back

In any case, you should really upgrade to a more modern wallet... get an HD wallet (I wouldn't recommend MultiBit HD tho... it is a bit broken at the moment)... and then you can just restore using a 12 word seed

It will also ensure that your transactions don't get stuck because of the stupid low fee settings that MultiBit Classic is stuck with.

[Lewnatic]

This is my multibit wallet file opened in the hex editor with the bytes 08 01 12 20 that precede a private key highlighted.

anyone here knows which hex codes come in a litecoin wallet before the private key? i got a corrupted and fragmented litecoin wallet and its probably the only way for me to restore it.

[HCP]

Maybe try Pywallet... it can be used with "other" wallets (ie. non-Bitcoin wallets) by using the "--otherversion" argument.

For litecoin, it would be: --otherversion 48

You can read about Pywallet here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34028.0