Help with "lost" bitcoins and address please

[kasael]

I have two computers (with windows installed), and installed in both of them a bitcoin wallet (bitcoin-0.8.1-win32). a laptop and a desktop.

Since i had to replace my laptop hard drive,i made a back up and copied an pasted the full drive into a secondary hard drive in my desktop, (a storage hard drive you know...). Overmore i made a copy of the "bitcoin-0.8.1-win32" folder into a flash drive too.

I had some bitcoins on my laptop, thats why i backed it up. But my desktop wallet was empty.

Now when i try to open any of the wallets from my desktop, all my bitcoins are missing!

I noticed that executing bitcoin-qt.exe would open always the same wallet as the "receiving addresses" shown, no matter what instance of bitcoin-qt.exe is executed is always the same, and none of the times is the address i had on my laptop (i know the address, as it is kept in the mining pool where i made my bitcoins).

I even tried to uninstall bitcoin from my desktop and when execting either the bitcoin-qt.exe on my secondary hard drive with the laptoback or my flash drive, it keeps showing the same address on the wallet, as if there where some kind of redirection to some user setting or anything?

what can i do to get back my bitcoins?

I haven't deleted ANY information, only moved it between drives, but it should be there somewhere.

[hotwired007]

you need to find your wallet.dat on the copy of the laptop HDD.

[b!z]

Wallet.dat file, look for it.

[kasael]

Ok i found a wallet.dat file from some previous back up but to be honest but i'm not sure if its the one i was looking for... anyway

how do i check how much is inside that wallet.dat file?

i dont seem to have a wallet.dat in the bitcoin-0.8.1-win32 folder from my laptop... strange :S

[coolbeans94]

the original wallet.dat file has your addresses with bitcoins on them. if you uninstalled qt and then reinstalled it, the old wallet.dat file may have been overwritten with a new empty wallet.dat file.

If you saved a copy of your original wallet.dat file to say a usb flash drive then you need to copy that wallet.dat file over the new wallet.dat that gets created when you reinstalled qt.

The file path is usually found in something like:
C:\Users\Yourname\AppData\Roaming

It is also usually "hidden" so to find the path you may need to make hidden files visible. Not sure if this is a help or not. Just don't lose the wallet.dat file that has your bitcoins. if you copy the wallet.dat to an external hard drive or flash drive for cold storage, and you delete it from your computer...just make sure you put it back in the same spot when you install bitcoin on your computer again. If you delete your wallet.dat file from your computer and then you try opening the Bitcoin qt again, it will create a new "empty" wallet.dat file.

[coolbeans94]

Copy the wallet.dat file in here (replace the other "empty" one)
C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming>Bitcoin
and then run the qt client again. It will then load the information from the new wallet.dat file .....and hopefully you will have your Bitcoins!

[b!z]

Ok i found a wallet.dat file from some previous back up but to be honest but i'm not sure if its the one i was looking for... anyway

how do i check how much is inside that wallet.dat file?

i dont seem to have a wallet.dat in the bitcoin-0.8.1-win32 folder from my laptop... strange :S

open it up with notepad, i think it will show privkeys if it is not encrypted

[kasael]

I opened it with notepad and notepad++ (a copy of it) and only strange characters are being shown

when i placed it in the folder you told me guys and opening bitcoin, it would tell me that the file is corrupt

im trying to do something with bitcointools-master but unsucessfully so far

[Birdy]

The important thing to note is that all keys to your Bitcoins are saved in the wallet.dat in the mentioned C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin
The "bitcoin-0.8.1-win32" folder is only the running program and doesn't have any keys at all.
So you will have to get the backup of this wallet.dat file or try to salvage the original one.
I wonder why it says that the file is corrupt, usually this doesn't happen with a clean copy.

open it up with notepad, i think it will show privkeys if it is not encrypted

Nope, it doesn't.

[kasael]

i think i remember i had encrypted it, but im not so sure

what should i see when opening the wallet in the case of being encrypted and in the case of not being?

[b!z]

The important thing to note is that all keys to your Bitcoins are saved in the wallet.dat in the mentioned C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin
The "bitcoin-0.8.1-win32" folder is only the running program and doesn't have any keys at all.
So you will have to get the backup of this wallet.dat file or try to salvage the original one.
I wonder why it says that the file is corrupt, usually this doesn't happen with a clean copy.

open it up with notepad, i think it will show privkeys if it is not encrypted

Nope, it doesn't.

Maybe it was with a different client, but I'm sure I've copied private keys from some sort of wallet before. Probably not qt then.

[kasael]

i'm sure i used the same client, thats for sure

[b!z]

i'm sure i used the same client, thats for sure

Yeah, that should not be a problem for you. Maybe you should use a file recover / "undeleter" / system restore software to see if there if you can recover an old backup?

[kasael]

Thanks for your answer b!z, i have been able also to recover three deleted wallets using recuva where i think my bitcoins might be, its not a lot of money, but i really want to learn how to use and solve these problems, more than the economic loss.

Recuva found three wallet.dat files that renamed to wallet.dat wallet1.dat and wallet2.dat i tried to change names to wallet.dat and making my qt client to read all the wallets and all the times i got the same error message: corrupt file

what command should i use? these wallets btw have different sizes, 72, 88 and 104 KBs.  probably because i received only two payments ?? (its my guess)

what should i try to recover these wallets (which i guess its the same wallet in different moments, its just my guess, i might be wrong)