Can I restore my Classic wallet from an encrypted private key text file?

[cheups_49]

Hi All

Apologies if this has been covered already but after running some searches I couldn't find any threads with the same problem I'm facing.

Years ago I had some BTC in a Classic wallet, although I have no recollection of the version or the name of the wallet.  After about a year of holding my BTC in the wallet, I got a bug on my laptop which meant I needed to factory restore the thing.  Before restoring the laptop, I made a note of my encrypted private keys - it is a string of characters 128 characters long beginning with the letter U, which is saved as a .key text file.

I now realise that I should have taken off the password protect in order to see the actual private keys in the 64 character format.  Unfortunately I did do this before I did the factory restore on the laptop and only have the 128 character long reference.

Do you know if it is possible to restore my wallet from the text file  I have described above or is it a lost cause?

Many thanks for any help!

[1715448876]

1715448876

[ranochigo]

It's a MultiBit Classic file. You can download MultiBit Classic and load the .key file to restore the wallet, export it unencrypted and sweep into another wallet.

HCP made a post here about decrypting it without MultiBit Classic:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5304446.msg55964982#msg55964982.

[cheups_49]

Thanks, @ranochigo

It's a MultiBit Classic file. You can download MultiBit Classic and load the .key file to restore the wallet, export it unencrypted and sweep into another wallet.

HCP made a post here about decrypting it without MultiBit Classic:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5304446.msg55964982#msg55964982.

Sorry for being a complete noob here, but when you say I need to load the .key file, how do you do this?  I think you mean that I need to:

- Open a new wallet
- Import Private Keys
- Import File -> select that .key text file that I have
- Let it sync?

I tried this before but the balance of BTC didn't seem to be restored after the sync.

I opened the text file and noted that there is a # preceding the U and there is a time stamp at the end. Not sure if I should remove these?

I had a quick look at HCP's post and to be honest I got really confused when they mentioned OpenSSL and Curl so will see if I can solve using your first suggestion! 


 

[ranochigo]

Sorry for being a complete noob here, but when you say I need to load the .key file, how do you do this?  I think you mean that I need to:

- Open a new wallet
- Import Private Keys
- Import File -> select that .key text file that I have
- Let it sync?

Export the wallet in the form of an unencrypted .key backup. You won't be able to synchronize the wallet, it's deprecated for a long time.

[cheups_49]

[/quote]
Export the wallet in the form of an unencrypted .key backup. You won't be able to synchronize the wallet, it's deprecated for a long time.
[/quote]

Could you guide me how to do this?  I don't know how to load the wallet from the encrypted .key text file I have.   

[HCP]

Step 1: Select "Tools -> Import Private Keys"



Step 2: Click the "Choose import file" button



Step 3: It should prompt you for the password, enter the password and click "unlock":


NOTE: if the password is incorrect, you'll get the "The private keys unlock failed. The error was "Could not decrypt input string."


Step 4. Import the keys:

If the password was correct, it should show a count of how many keys are in the .key file and the 'replay date' (this is when they were created)


Then simply click the "Import private Keys" button. You should see the "success" message:



You will likely then need to wait for Multibit to finish syncing the wallet... it should still work, it will just be very slow as there aren't many peers any more. Once it has finished syncing, you should be able to export using the "Tools -> Export Private Keys" option:



NOTE: DO NOT password protect the export file... otherwise you'll be back where you started