Restoring paper wallet (ELECTRUM)

[howper]

I recently tried to restore my Electrum paper wallet using my 12 word seed. After following the instructions (create new wallet>I already have a seed, etc.) I have 0. mbtc balance, no transaction history. Tried it on several computers. Wallet was created with older version of Electrum, am now using the newest release. I am sure my seed is correct and have read other people are experiencing the same problem. Any solutions so far?
Thanks in advance.

[NeuroticFish]

I recently tried to restore my Electrum paper wallet using my 12 word seed. After following the instructions (create new wallet>I already have a seed, etc.) I have 0. mbtc balance, no transaction history. Tried it on several computers. Wallet was created with older version of Electrum, am now using the newest release. I am sure my seed is correct and have read other people are experiencing the same problem. Any solutions so far?
Thanks in advance.

I think that something has change meanwhile (how old is your mnemonic seed?) and the addresses you get now from the seed are not the ones you got when you first made the wallet. Maybe there's a way to see if the address you know (you've sent money to) is in the list of addresses in Electrum. (View->Show addresses)

I don't know the solution for your problem, but I can give you some directions to search.
This tells that the seed has change. Maybe you can locate in time, maybe just downloading and installing an Electrum 2.x solves your issue.
Here's a thread made by somebody with a problem quite similar to yours. Did you also had a password?

Another idea is to try and ask in Electrum threads.

[Lakai01]

Electrum tries to create a segwit wallet out of your seed. If your seed is older, you have to specify an other derivation code.

[howper]

@NeuroticFish, thank you for the advice. The 2.x version didn't work. @Lakai01, how would I do that and where? My seed was created in august 2017.

[Abdussamad]

@howper Electrum maintains backwards compatibility with all previous seed mnemonics so don't listen to anyone telling you to use an old version. Always use the latest version. Old versions have security vulnerabilities in them.

Here is a list of things you can look into.

[bob123]

@howper Electrum maintains backwards compatibility with all previous seed mnemonics so don't listen to anyone telling you to use an old version. Always use the latest version. Old versions have security vulnerabilities in them.

^This.


@OP:
What kind of addresses did electrum produce the first time? Did they start with a 1.. (legacy) ?
You might try to open the console (View -> Show console -> Console tab) and enter this command:

Code:

ismine("YOUR_ADDRESS_HERE")

It will return true if this address is part of the wallet.


If it does return false and you are sure your seed is correct, then most probably the derivation path is wrong.
You can choose the derivation path when restoring from a seed and clicking on 'options', choose BIP39, and edit the derivation path in the next window.