Recovering BTC from 2013 mining

[BitCoinSeo]

I joined the BTCGuild mining pool back in 2013 and was doing some small scale mining with GUIminer on my GPU. Honestly it was all very new and over my head, and I'd forgotten I'd even done it.

I was able to boot into this old PC (its offline and barely even loads windows now) and ran GUIminer, but it says Balance 0.
The view summary and view console doesn't do anything.
The log file in the directory is empty.

I do have my username/password for BTCguild.

Is there any way I can find out more information?

[jackg]

Is btc guild a site? Can you log in to it?

You could also search your computer for "wallet" to see if any matches come up (either from C:\ - Windows - or / - Linux).

[BitCoinSeo]

Thanks Jack 

The btc guild site was shutdown a few years back I found out.

Yes there is a wallet.dat file there. The PC is so cactus that the WIFI is broken and the USB isn't working. So I'll try again tomorrow to copy the file off. 
I can't remember how long it mined for but wasn't too long before I *fortuitously* decided electricity wasn't worth my while. 

Once I've got the wallet.dat file, is there a way to check the balance on it ?

[RapTarX]

Copy the wallet.dat file and install the latest version of the wallet and paste the old wallet.dat file in the new one. Start your wallet and it should work (wait for sync and see if it has fund). Don't lose the old data anyway, keep them safe. You can recover your fund (if it has).

[jackg]

Once I've got the wallet.dat file, is there a way to check the balance on it ?

If your Internet is pretty slow. You cna instead export your private keys and import them into Software like electrum > downloadable from electrum.org which will see a much faster syncing process. (if searching Google for software downloads, be sure to check you don't click an ad).

Alternatively, if the wallet.dat is located among blocks and chainstate folder an initial sync may not be required and you might see your funds fairly quickly after the startup window vanishes.

Once core is installed, I fyou moved the wallet.dat file, copy it into either ~/.Bitcoin (Linux) or %appdata%/roaming/bitcoin (Windows) before starting the program.

Backup your wallet.dat on an external drive too!

[PrimeNumber7]

Is btc guild a site? Can you log in to it?

btcguild was a pool that shut down about 5 years ago. If the OP had a balance on his pool account, he can try contacting the operator of btc guild, but I would not bet on being able to recover any balance considering it has been over 5 years since the pool shutdown.

[BitCoinSeo]

The wallet.dat file did contain various folders similar to what you mentioned.
I've copied just the wallet.dat file to a modern computer.
Installed Electrum, and where it asks for the wallet at the loadup, I pointed it to the wallet files path, and it gave an error (which i'm just posting a snippet of it);

Cannot read file
UnicodeDecodeError('utf-8', b'\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00b1\x05\x00\t\x00\x00\x00\x00 \x00\x00\x00\t\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\t\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 \x00\x00\x00\xd9\x8c\x04\x00\x00\x00=\x00N\x89&\x1b\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 \x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x


Is the wallet format too old for electrum?

thankyou.

Once I've got the wallet.dat file, is there a way to check the balance on it ?

If your Internet is pretty slow. You cna instead export your private keys and import them into Software like electrum > downloadable from electrum.org which will see a much faster syncing process. (if searching Google for software downloads, be sure to check you don't click an ad).

Alternatively, if the wallet.dat is located among blocks and chainstate folder an initial sync may not be required and you might see your funds fairly quickly after the startup window vanishes.

Once core is installed, I fyou moved the wallet.dat file, copy it into either ~/.Bitcoin (Linux) or %appdata%/roaming/bitcoin (Windows) before starting the program.

Backup your wallet.dat on an external drive too!

[BitCoinSeo]

Copy the wallet.dat file and install the latest version of the wallet and paste the old wallet.dat file in the new one. Start your wallet and it should work (wait for sync and see if it has fund). Don't lose the old data anyway, keep them safe. You can recover your fund (if it has).

Please pardon my ignorance, I just haven't dealt much with PC wallets.

Trying the bitcoin.org wallet now (downloading the core - ETA 6 weeks, it was originally 11 years lol )
There's a couple obstacles with this recovery attempt;
BTC Guild may have grabbed whatever balance I had. (So I will try the wallet balance method and then secondly I have messaged the owner via reddit but no response yet).
The private key is not immediately known to me and it may require some hunting to track it down. But I'm thinking at this stage,it's only worth going down this road if there is some balance that is even recoverable?

[BitCoinSeo]

Thanks ETF.

Update: ran the -reindex switch again and its started updating again back from the beginning. Will see how that goes.
thanks for all the suggestions and help.


Yep, downloaded bitcoin core, and left it running to update the core blocks, it had done up to around 2011. I came back home couple hours later, and looks like it has terminated itself. Program not visible, not hiding in tasktray either. Gone from windows processes.

I ran it again and get error that it needs reindexing.
http://prntscr.com/vxd4yv

So I ran from the command line;
C:\Program Files\Bitcoin>bitcoin-qt.exe -reindex
And that says cannot obtain a lock on data directory, Bitcoin core is probably already running.
https://prnt.sc/vxd87k

Not sure wether to believe the first error or the second one.

Is the wallet format too old for electrum?

No, but Electrum cannot open wallet.dat file which created by Bitcoin-Qt/Bitcoin-Core. You should download Bitcoin Core, load the wallet.dat, then:
1. extract the private key and export it to Electrum
2. Wait until Bitcoin Core fully synced (where you need to download 300GB+ of blockchain)

[BitCoinSeo]

The blockchain update has been running for about 60hrs now and it's 87% done.
I'm on a fast NBN connection and computer too. Wow - what a long wait.

[BITCOIN4X]

OP, I had a similar problem when my PC broke. But since I have a copy of the wallet.dat file, I can get all my data back along with some bitcoin on it.
Easy steps to recover your data on bitcoin core if you have wallet.dat file are:
- Install bitcoin core on your pc
- If you use windows then go to the following steps:

Code:

User/Administrator/AppData/Roaming/Bitcoin

- There is a folder that has a wallet.dat file
- Delete the default wallet.dat file and replace it with your old wallet.dat file.
- Reopen your bitcoin core and see the result.

I don't think this step requires you to wait for syncing too long. If you have balance in it, it will appear after you have done these steps.

[BitCoinSeo]

I did the steps you mentioned, thanks. And after it says Loading blocks
I get this error, then it shuts down. 
http://prntscr.com/vznvx8

I"m wondering if the wallet was setup properly, small chance its damaged but that would be unlikely or if it's just too old for the current software.

Is there any other way to extract the public key from it and then look up transactions on that?

[vapourminer]

I did the steps you mentioned, thanks. And after it says Loading blocks
I get this error, then it shuts down. 
http://prntscr.com/vznvx8
[...]
Is there any other way to extract the public key from it and then look up transactions on that?

1st thing to do is copy (backup) that original wallet.dat to several places. do NOT post or send that wallet.dat to anyone. if you get private messages offering to "help" you IGNORE them.

then post here in the tech support section as it will have more people who know the software.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=4.0

i believe that there are ways to find if theres any balance without downloading the whole blockchain, probably some console command. but DO NOT run any random commands until several others have OKed those commands.