Electrum Synchronising

[AZKNM]

Hello all ... I am here again after basic help with Electrum. Thank you for your patience and advice!
I successfully migrated my old Multibit keys to Electrum last year, got it working, took the keys off the computer and was happy it was all secure again.

I replaced the HD on the computer after this (not thinking about the Electrum) and only this week come back to check in, and the Electrum keys won't work, and it won't take the password.

So I made a new wallet with the seed words, and it just sits there synchronising. The receiving address is not my original code, is this ok?

I also tried a new wallet with the original key from Multibit, it took them ok (this required an older version of Electrum last time) and it shows my original address as the recieving address. Which was reassuring to see ... But it is still sychronising too.

When I did this last time it took a day of synchronising to come up with a balance. Is this right? I should just sit tight?

ALSO ... does the compute need to sit there online to synchronise? This is a bit of a security risk, right?

Can anyone offer some wisdom? Or reassurance! I find this rather stressful because I really do not understand this stuff ...

thank you for any kind words of support ...

[HCP]

I also tried a new wallet with the original key from Multibit, it took them ok (this required an older version of Electrum last time) and it shows my original address as the recieving address. Which was reassuring to see ... But it is still sychronising too.

Older versions of Electrum will not synchronise properly. You need at least v3.3.4... the current version is v3.3.6. DO NOT download any version from any site other than: https://electrum.org/#download

Also, follow the instructions to verify the digital signature: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/


As for not accepting the keys, it is likely because Electrum supports creating addresses in all three formats:
- Legacy... aka P2PKH... aka "1"-type addresses
- Nested SegWit... aka P2SH-P2WPKH... aka "3"-type addresses
- Native SegWit... aka P2WPKH... aka "bc1"-type addresses

To import your multibit keys, you will need to import them in the format:
p2pkh:YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY_GOES_HERE

So I made a new wallet with the seed words, and it just sits there synchronising. The receiving address is not my original code, is this ok?

Did you import your old MultiBit keys... or did you sweep your old keys?.

The two things are very different... importing simply clones the keys into your Electrum wallet... whereas sweeping actually sends the coins from your old keys/addresses to new keys/addresses. So, if you simply imported the multibit keys, then the seed words you have will likely not contain the coins from your multibit keys.

In any case, the Electrum seed will definitely not create the same keys as your multibit wallet did.

[TryNinja]

Do as explained above and download Electrum’s latest version.

Don’t forget to also verify your file signature to make sure the files you downloaded are legit. Make this an habit and you won’t regret: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/