How to recover lost bitcoin wallet?

[Alina-malina]

How to recover lost bitcoin wallet? I know that my question sound silly, but anyway what is the possible technics/methods to do that, even if it will take like gazzilion years to find/bust the wallet and access bitcoins in it?

[dutch2peer]

There is no supported way to recover your wallet. The only way is to brute-force the password, this would indeed take an eternity if you have no clue what the password was. However if you a slight clue what the password was, the possiblities to brute-force it would drastically deminish, which might make it worth to try. There are tools/services which are able to do this for you, google

[PenAndPaper]

What you mean by lost wallet? Have you formatted your pc or something or you forgot the password?

[AuroraHF]

It could possibly be over-written already if you reformatted. There are some commercial software that is dedicated to recovering deleted files, but I'm not sure if that would work. Good luck though.

[nevermindit]

Once you lose your password, probably you are lost. However, some guys on the services forum offer password recovery service. Search for it.

[cameraliker]

You may not.

Sorry for that. Cheer up and gather more coins than before.

[BlazeOfGlory]

Did you lose the wallet itself, or the password?

The guys at http://www.walletrecoveryservices.com/ may be able to recover it for you, under certain circumstances. This is assuming that you lost only the password, and your wallet is still intact.

[finmingun]

Guys are there to recover the wallet with partial keys, and brute force method. Search inside the forum and also google it.

[wumpus]

Did you lose the wallet or the encryption key?

If you lost the wallet file (through deletion, corruption, formatting) and you were quick enough to shut your computer down before it was overwritten, there are tools that can scan an entire harddisk image for key signatures and re-create a wallet (for example, jackjack's pywallet).

If you lost the encryption key there are companies that help with recovery, as mentioned they will ask you for all your knowledge about the passphrase and use directed brute force.

In case the harddisk broke down, the data can be recovered with forensic techniques. This is expensive, but may be worth it in some cases.

Moral of story: make regular backups!

[Alina-malina]

Thanks to all who replied, no I have no broken HDD, deleted files, lost wallet file nor encrypted key, I only have my bitcoin address, so I am interested with knowin address, how hard will be to recreate the wallet and make it up and running, thanks for all answers!

[perfectlyfit]

Backup! Backup! Backup! is the only key to safeguard your wallet in case of damages to storage. And if accidentally a transaction is made to a wrong address, you would lose your coins.

[ajax3592]

Back up your private keys. Write it down or copy onto a flash drive.

[Alina-malina]

Thank you for your reply, dear people, I think you misunderstanding my question. My question is the following: If I have only my bitcoin wallet address is it possible to crack or generate somehow, and no matter how long it will take to recover the wallet? This is what I am asking, I am not interested in backup of HDD or other methods, i am only interested in that particular case, thank you for your attempts answer my question!

[Nolo]

Thank you for your reply, dear people, I think you misunderstanding my question. My question is the following: If I have only my bitcoin wallet address is it possible to crack or generate somehow, and no matter how long it will take to recover the wallet? This is what I am asking, I am not interested in backup of HDD or other methods, i am only interested in that particular case, thank you for your attempts answer my question!

If you're talking about your public key, then no.  Absolutely no way possible.  End of discussion.
If you're talking about your private key, then yes, and quite easily.

(Unfortunately if you have to ask this question, then you're talking about your public key.  So no, there is no way to recover that.)

[Alina-malina]

Thanks for your response Nolo, yes i was talking about my public key a.k.a bitcoin address, thank you for explaination.

[wumpus]

Thanks for your response Nolo, yes i was talking about my public key a.k.a bitcoin address, thank you for explaination.

It's indeed not possible using just the address*. That would be a huge security hole

* unless all of ECDSA, SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160 algorithms are compromised

[Lidam]

Thanks for your response Nolo, yes i was talking about my public key a.k.a bitcoin address, thank you for explaination.

In that case, your bitcoin is probably forever lost.

[Alina-malina]

Yes, I agree with you it may be lost, but I am interested in the technic of recovering it, what tools should i use to try until it be recovered? Do you understand what I am saying?

[odolvlobo]

Yes, I agree with you it may be lost, but I am interested in the technic of recovering it, what tools should i use to try until it be recovered? Do you understand what I am saying?

The technique is this:

1. Generate a random 256-bit number between 0x1 and 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4141. (a private key).
2. Determine the bitcoin address for the generated private key.
3. If the generated bitcoin address matches, you have the private key and you are done. If not go back to step 1.

This is called "brute force". There is no other technique.

[Wendjo]

Yes, I agree with you it may be lost, but I am interested in the technic of recovering it, what tools should i use to try until it be recovered? Do you understand what I am saying?

If you only have the public address or public key, there is no real way (other than brute force) for you to recover the private key.

If someone is able to do that for you, he could have taken everyone's btc as well.