Missing BTC in Android Electrum wallet after upgrading phone

[afedorak]

I upgraded my Samsung phone from a 9+ to a 21+ and when installing the Electrum APP to the new phone only one of my two wallets returned with the proper BTC, the other wallet returned a zero balance. I set up the second wallet myself initially and was successfully adding BTC as well as transferring BTC to Coinbase. But now there is nothing there. I'm wondering what I could have done wrong setting up the second wallet so that Electrum doesn't see the balance in the second wallet?

I used each wallet's unique seed for the new phone, and like I said, only the default wallet is showing the proper balance. The other wallet shows zero balance.  I have since installed Electrum on my laptop and I get the same result.

The old phone got factory reset before the problem was discovered.

Any advice or ideas out there in the community?

Thanks...

[HCP]

Were the seeds initially created using Electrum or were they imported seeds from another wallet? If they were Electrum generated seeds, then they would be "versioned", so would automatically restore using the correct derivation path and script type.

If they were imported seeds that were generated by another wallet, are the addresses that are generated in Electrum of the same type as they used to be? ie. "1"-type, "3"-type or "bc1"-type addresses? Or has this now changed? ie. they were "1"-type addresses, but now start with "bc1"? If they address type has changed, then the derivation path and/or script type is likely incorrect and Electrum is generating the wrong addresses.


Another likely reason is that you "extended the seed with custom word(s)" when you originally setup your wallet... if you did add an extra word or words (aka a "Seed passphrase"), then you must use the same extra words when restoring your wallet, otherwise the wallet generated will be completely different.


Finally, and less likely... is that the seed you have for your 2nd wallet is just wrong. Have you ever used this seed to restore your wallet before? Or is this the first time you have used it? If you haven't tested it before, it's possible that you have written down a "valid" seed, but one that was for a different wallet It's not common, but it does happen... although it is more common with the desktop version.

[o_e_l_e_o]

In addition to answering HCP's questions which will help us narrow down the problem, when restoring the non-working seed phrase on your laptop, when you enter your seed phrase some text may pop up below it. Something along the lines of "Seed type: legacy". What does this text say, or do you not see it at all?

Did you go in to options and check "BIP39 seed" when you were restoring the seed? If you do this now, the text should change to either "BIP39 (checksum: passed/failed). What does it say now?

[BitMaxz]

If you believe it was generated from Electrum and you tried to do the above suggestion but still don't show any balances then try this one.

Since you already restore your 2nd wallet seed to Electrum in PC get the xPub you can find it in wallet>information it must show a long text that starts with xPub, yPub or zPub just copy them all and then use this tool https://blockpath.com/wallets/new?action=appxpub
Paste the whole text there and select scan all and then click start scan.

If the seed that you restore is right and it must show some used addresses or balances but if not then it's not the right seed. If you are lucky and found addresses with balances you can see the exact derivation path on the left side under index that you can use to point your wallet on the right derivation path.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you believe it was generated from Electrum and you tried to do the above suggestion but still don't show any balances then try this one.

Using the blockpath tool doesn't really make sense with Electrum seed phrases, since there is no option with Electrum generated seed phrases to change the derivation path used. The only way he would have a non-standard derivation path with an Electrum seed phrase would be if he had created an Electrum wallet, written down the seed phrase, then created a new wallet, restored from the seed phrase he had written down, told Electrum it was a BIP39 seed phrase instead, ignored the checksum failure, and then manually specified a non-standard derivation path. Since he initially set this up on mobile, where it is not possible to ignore a failed BIP39 checksum, then he cannot have done this.

If his seed was a BIP39 seed phrase, on the other hand, then it would make more sense to restore it on the desktop version of Electrum and try the "Detect existing accounts" button.

[afedorak]

Thank you all for the advice. I'll try what has been posted and let you know.