0 Balance when opening my wallet.dat file

[SeansinWiscottle]

Earlier this year in May, I was able to purchase my first few BTC. I saved bitcoin-qt version 0.8.1-beta to a USB drive and also saved a copy of my wallet.dat file to another USB drive. Now when trying to view my balance, I synced with the network and see a balance of 0. I know the coins are still there because I viewed the address on blockchain info. I tried opening my wallet.dat file without having qt client running, but when I browse the files to open it with the qt client it doesnt add it to the list of programs to use. I downloaded the 0.8.5-beta version, but that didn't change anything either. Any ideas? Thank you!

[1715680603]

1715680603

[1715680603]

1715680603

[gadman2]

Import the priv key to a different protocol like electrum or something.

[michagogo]

Earlier this year in May, I was able to purchase my first few BTC. I saved bitcoin-qt version 0.8.1-beta to a USB drive and also saved a copy of my wallet.dat file to another USB drive. Now when trying to view my balance, I synced with the network and see a balance of 0. I know the coins are still there because I viewed the address on blockchain info. I tried opening my wallet.dat file without having qt client running, but when I browse the files to open it with the qt client it doesnt add it to the list of programs to use. I downloaded the 0.8.5-beta version, but that didn't change anything either. Any ideas? Thank you!

Sounds to me like you're not caught up on the blockchain.

[safeminer]

you most likely don't have the complete blockchain. Let your wallet software run for a couple of days, they will appear

[SeansinWiscottle]

I'm synced with the network. The thing is that when I was syncing to the network, the time on my computer kept changing due to a bug with the operating system (both OSX and windows 7 enterprise). Could this be causing my client to not be caught up with the blockchain?

[grue]

I tried opening my wallet.dat file without having qt client running, but when I browse the files to open it with the qt client it doesnt add it to the list of programs to use.

you can't open bitcoin wallets as a file. you must place it in bitcoin-qt's data directory.

[deepceleron]

I tried opening my wallet.dat file without having qt client running, but when I browse the files to open it with the qt client it doesnt add it to the list of programs to use.

you can't open bitcoin wallets as a file. you must place it in bitcoin-qt's data directory.

For the OS-specific file location to "restore" your wallet backup, see:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet

Hint: %appdata%\Bitcoin
If Bitcoin doesn't have a wallet.dat in it's data directory when it starts, it will create a new blank one.

[SeansinWiscottle]

Ok, thanks I will try that. How do I store the processed blocks on my flash drive so each time I put it in a new computer, the client doesn't have to sync the entire block history?

[deepceleron]

Ok, thanks I will try that. How do I store the processed blocks on my flash drive so each time I put it in a new computer, the client doesn't have to sync the entire block history?

Instead of copying the wallet.dat file from the bitcoin data directory, copy the entire directory contents except wallet.dat (around 13.5GB now). This can be restored to any computer you wish to run Bitcoin on to avoid the complete re-downloading of the blockchain; only the wallet.dat file contains the personal information about your addresses.

It is not a good idea to use the same wallet.dat on multiple computers, they will go out-of-sync after many transactions or as soon as you start adding labels. A good way to lose money, as eventually one wallet won't have addresses that are in the other.

[Rez]

It is not a good idea to use the same wallet.dat on multiple computers, they will go out-of-sync after many transactions or as soon as you start adding labels. A good way to lose money, as eventually one wallet won't have addresses that are in the other.

A very good point, and can't be made enough.

[SeansinWiscottle]

Uh-oh. In that case, I think I may have made a terrible mistake. The following will be my attempt to accurately illustrate my actions since purchasing my first few BTC earlier this year.

After buying about 5 BTC from localbitcoin.com, I borrowed a laptop in order to make my own wallet and store it on a flash drive, since I don't own a computer. The bitcoin-qt client was downloaded to the laptop, synced, and I sent my BTC to that wallet. Then I copied the qt client to my flash drive,  'backed up' the wallet.dat file - saved it in another folder on the same flash drive and named it "CHEESE.dat" (don't ask why). Please note that I didn't know about any info stored inside of %appdata% - or that it even existed (which is stupid of me if you look at my post history). I haven't made any transactions since that time. That laptop I borrowed has since been returned and wiped.

In summary, I have the bitcoin-qt client along with my CHEESE.dat file on a flash drive, and I have synced the qt client on other computers and tried replacing the wallet in %appdata% with my CHEESE.dat file (I renamed it wallet.dat once I moved it into %appdata%) - still 0 BTC. Is there any hope to recover the lost BTC?

Thank you for your help in advance.
P.S. I am planning on buying a laptop in the near future to avoid this problem.

[TwinWinNerD]

just export all private keys from each of the wallets and use the blockchain.info wallet to import them. You should have your BTC in a second

[BitcoinAddicts]

just export all private keys from each of the wallets and use the blockchain.info wallet to import them. You should have your BTC in a second

Sorry but how do you export the private keys....

[DannyHamilton]

Uh-oh. In that case, I think I may have made a terrible mistake. The following will be my attempt to accurately illustrate my actions since purchasing my first few BTC earlier this year.

After buying about 5 BTC from localbitcoin.com, I borrowed a laptop in order to make my own wallet and store it on a flash drive, since I don't own a computer. The bitcoin-qt client was downloaded to the laptop, synced, and I sent my BTC to that wallet. Then I copied the qt client to my flash drive,  'backed up' the wallet.dat file - saved it in another folder on the same flash drive and named it "CHEESE.dat" (don't ask why). Please note that I didn't know about any info stored inside of %appdata% - or that it even existed (which is stupid of me if you look at my post history). I haven't made any transactions since that time. That laptop I borrowed has since been returned and wiped.

In summary, I have the bitcoin-qt client along with my CHEESE.dat file on a flash drive, and I have synced the qt client on other computers and tried replacing the wallet in %appdata% with my CHEESE.dat file (I renamed it wallet.dat once I moved it into %appdata%) - still 0 BTC. Is there any hope to recover the lost BTC?

Thank you for your help in advance.
P.S. I am planning on buying a laptop in the near future to avoid this problem.

When you look in the "Receive" section of Bitcoin-Qt, you'll see your addresses there.  Do you see the address that you sent the 5 BTC to?  If not, then you either made an error when you tried to copy wallet.dat into %appdata% or you made an error when you tried to create a backup of wallet.dat to CHEESE.dat.

The naming of the wallet file is specific.  It is likely that it won't work if you accidentally named it "WALLET.DAT", or "Wallet.dat", or "wallet.dat.txt", or any other variation.  Take a look in the %appdata% directory.  Make sure you only have one file in that directory named wallet.dat and that it is all lower case with nothing else in the filename.

If you see the address that you expect in the "Receive" section of Bitcoin-Qt, then it is possible that you need to start up Bitcoin-Qt with the rescan command line parameter.

[SeansinWiscottle]

I don't see any addresses.

Here's exactly how I stored the wallet.dat file on my flash drive:
In the Bitcoin-qt client (at this time I had a balance of bitcoin showing) I clicked ->File ->Backup Wallet. In the window that popped up, I saved the file as "CHEESE.dat" onto my removable disk. Are there any possibilities that the file on the removable disk, doesn't contain the same balance that was seen when had the Bitcoin-qt client open?


EDIT: I got a balance but must have created a new address after I stored the backup wallet because I am missing 3 BTC

Thanks for all the help!

[deepceleron]

If you had a balance showing in your Bitcoin-Qt before you backed up the wallet, that balance should still be showing when you restore the wallet.

A poster above alluded to a potential problem renaming the file - Windows by default hides the full file name from you (the stupidest thing ever). To fix this:

• In Windows Control Panel, go to Folder Options, the View tab,
• select 'Show hidden files, folders and drives', uncheck 'Hide extensions for known file types', uncheck 'Hide protected operating system files'.

Then you will see un-altered file names.

You must be 100% sure that Bitcoin is not running when doing anything with the wallet.dat file. The bitcoin data directory on Windows is %appdata%\Bitcoin directory (a shortcut to C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin, or whatever your correct Windows path is). This is where the real wallet.dat used by Bitcoin will be located. Create a text file named bitcoin.conf in that directory if you don't have one, and add these lines, to make bitcoin close when you specify and not accidentally run in the tray:

minimizetotray=0
min=0

Close Bitcoin. Bitcoin also may take over a minute to close, be sure it is not running in task manager before doing anything wallet-related.

After all that, rename whatever wallet.dat file you have in the bitcoin data directory to move it out of the way. Then restore your backup, with the correct name, to this directory.

Finally, to ensure that you have a correct balance, when you start Bitcoin-Qt for the first time, run it with the command-line option Bitcoin-Qt -rescan. It will take about 10 minutes before it starts up, as it looks through all blocks to find transactions and your actual balance.

If you do not have a balance at this point, your backup does not have the address, or the bitcoins are spent.
To see if the wallet even controls the address, in Bitcoin-Qt, go to Help->Debug Window, Console Tab, and type dumpprivkey (using your bitcoin address). You will get either the private key if your wallet includes the address, or a red error message if it does not. If you do not have the address, then your backup is bad, perhaps taken before you encrypted the wallet and created another address, or copied while Bitcoin was running.

[iamphoenix]

trying that -rescan thing with primecoin wallet. hope it works. this has been the most difficult area for me is backing up and cold storage; private keys etc. someone should livestream a bitcoin beginners interm advanced course around the world...


....

fuck... ive tried everything ... how can i just make the wallet redownload the whole block chain from the console what do i type?