Received bitcoins from Bit Faucet yesterday but gone today!

[bitbadger]

Hi everyone,

Im completely new to Bitcoin and yesterday I received a free allocation of Bitcoins (0.001 BTC).

They appeared in my wallet after a couple of hours and were there all day yesterday.

Today I started the Bitcoin client and the Bitcoins are no longer appearing in my wallet.

There are absolutely no entries for received, sent, all transactions, etc. Nothing.

At the bottom of the window it says 12 connections 139988 blocks 0 transactions.

My transaction block was 139838. I havent moved the wallet.dat or anything and Im connected to the internet.

It shows my bitcoin address at the top.

Balance is 0.00

Does it take a while for the Bitcoins to reappear?

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[ziv]

This is not normal. Once a transaction is confirmed it should stay in the list and the balance should not change unless you use some coins.

My first throughts are either the wallet file got lost due to disk corruption or your computer is infected.

Is the computer stable or does it crash ocasionally?
Do you proactise good computer hygiene of not running software from untrustworth sources and have a good up to data antivirus program.

Perhaps people will have more ideas if you say a bit more about your setup start with what operating system?

[bitbadger]

OK, I have Windows Vista Home Edition with the latest main service packs.
I use AVG 2011 Anti Virus.

My machine doesnt have any crashes or virus problems as a rule. Im online 24x7 with broadband DSL.

One problem the machine has (its a laptop) is that the system clock doesnt always keep time properly. Ive tried many times to solve this problem but with no success, so I just now live with it. I have to update date manually every so often and then sync with an NTP time server to set the time  correctly. It then keeps time for a while but then stops again later on.  

Today sunday for instance Windows still showed saturday and the incorrect time. So I had to update it manually.

Perhaps this has an effect on Bitcoin?

I also did a reboot today, twice in fact.

I note the Bitcoin client now shows 24 connections and 140004 blocks 0 transactions. But I'm new to this stuff and dont know for sure what this means...

I read something about Bitcoin having to read through or download block chains, and that this takes time eg in some cases a few hours or more, maybe this is why the Bitcoins arent showing yet?

I checked the wallet.dat and its still there in the Bitcoin directory.

Maybe I should try re-installing the Bitcoin client?

Or would this mean my wallet contents would definitely be lost for good? (though there doesnt seem to be anything in it right now, at least not displayed, so there would be pretty well nothing to lose)? I have a copy of my wallet.dat saved separately.

[bitbadger]

Well I decided to try reinstalling Bitcoin. No difference. I also restored my old wallet.dat.

Also no difference. Bitcoins are gone.

Maybe the wallet was broken into, I don't know. Or else some unknown technical problem. I also did a full virus check of my system. Nothing found.

Either way it doesnt inspire confidence in Bitcoin when the system fails on the first trial, when the first time you try it out your money disappears 24 hours later. I certainly won't be buying any Bitcoins unless or until I know what is going on here.

[bitbadger]

Some good news.

My Bitcoin client is now showing my correct credit balance. There is also a second Bitcoin transaction I made yesterday showing.

My faith in Bitcoin is renewed!

I left the Bitcoin client running all night.

Under "all transactions" it says 5 not confirmed and 246 confirmed (my Bitcoin client is in Dutch, so I dont know if this is the precise translation). In the bottom right hand corner it says "2 transactions".

So am I right in saying that it looks like you have to keep the Bitcoin client running the whole time?

[LoneTrader]

No, you don't need to keep it running. It just needs to download the entire transaction history when it is started for the first time.

Here is what I suspect happened (and if it is true, it seems like a bug): The client probably listens to transactions even before they enter any block, and shows them as "unconfirmed" with 0 confirmations. But when you close the client and reopen it, you don't see them any more, until they actually enter a block and your client downloads that block. This is sort of all right, since there is one block about every 10 minutes or so -- except the client probably shouldn't display any unconfirmed transactions at all until it has downloaded all blocks. I read somewhere that the next client version will have a better status indicator, which might solve this problem as well.

[leeloulee]

thats weird for sure

[Herbert]

Here is what I suspect happened (and if it is true, it seems like a bug): The client probably listens to transactions even before they enter any block, and shows them as "unconfirmed" with 0 confirmations. But when you close the client and reopen it, you don't see them any more, until they actually enter a block and your client downloads that block. This is sort of all right, since there is one block about every 10 minutes or so -- except the client probably shouldn't display any unconfirmed transactions at all until it has downloaded all blocks. I read somewhere that the next client version will have a better status indicator, which might solve this problem as well.

This sounds like a reasonable explanation. But still i can understand the worries of bitbadger - this is definitely not nice for a first impression. At least i can say on my side the first impression was fine, no problems whatsoever so far. Maybe this issue should be forwarded to developers for further investigation?

[bitbadger]

No, you don't need to keep it running. It just needs to download the entire transaction history when it is started for the first time.

Here is what I suspect happened (and if it is true, it seems like a bug): The client probably listens to transactions even before they enter any block, and shows them as "unconfirmed" with 0 confirmations. But when you close the client and reopen it, you don't see them any more, until they actually enter a block and your client downloads that block. This is sort of all right, since there is one block about every 10 minutes or so -- except the client probably shouldn't display any unconfirmed transactions at all until it has downloaded all blocks. I read somewhere that the next client version will have a better status indicator, which might solve this problem as well.

Thanks for the explanation. I appreciate Bitcoin is in early days yet.

It will take a while for problems in the client to be ironed out.