Runtime error with Bitcoin Qt

[PA992]

I just downloaded Bitcoin Qt and have run it twice (it's doing the synch, of course) and both times it has crashed and given me the following error message:

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library

The application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.

I'm expecting bitcoins, but apparently I won't receive them/see them until the synch is finished, so I have no way of knowing if I lost my bitcoins.


edit


Forgot to mention that it synchs for quite a while and then it crashes. And the data is preserved; I'm at "23 weeks."

[jsmith46]

Hmm... The most common reason for a popup like that is an uncaught exception. If it occurs again, open the run dialog and type "notepad %appdata%/bitcoin/debug.log".  That will open a log with debugging information. Look through the last thirty lines or so and see if there is anything that looks like it might be an error message.  If so, post the message here, and hopefully the core developers will see it and be able to fix the underlying problem.

If all else fails, you can always use one of the lightweight wallets, like MultiBit (https://multibit.org/). Those who are planning to have thousands of dollars worth of BTC, or people who want the greatest possible level of anonymity should avoid the light-weight wallet in favor of a full wallet like Bitcoin-QT, but for most people, the light-weight wallets are fine.

[PA992]

Thanks for the educated response.

What are the chances that I lost my bitcoins?

[jsmith46]

Thanks for the educated response.

What are the chances that I lost my bitcoins?

The only way to lose bitcoins is send them to some other address, have somebody steal your private keys and send them someplace else, or to lose the private keys.

As long as you backup the wallet properly and don't get hacked (or equivlent like getting a bitcoin stealing virus), you won't lose the coins.  It is absolutely critical to back up the wallet properly, and at regular intervals. (The exception is that certain wallet programs create wallets that only need to be backed up once. These are called "deterministic wallets". Currently the main Bitcoin-QT program does not support them, but in the future it will.)

At this time the default Bitcoin-QT system does not make backups as user-friendly as it really should be, so if you have questions, be sure to ask.