Opening a legacy wallet takes about 1 hour

[joe101]

I'm trying to look through old wallets to see if there is any Bitcoin in them. The wallets are 5 year old wallets.

They are the old style bitcoin addresses. It takes about 1 hour for it to open and show me the balance.

Why does it take so long to open. Is there another way I can accomplish this?

[OmegaStarScream]

Which wallet are you using? It shouldn't take that long to show the funds unless the wallet has thousands of transactions or maybe you're still haven't downloaded the whole blockchain (if using bitcoin core) yet.

[joe101]

I am using Bitcoin core 22.0

There is only about 5 transactions.


I downloaded the whole blockchain. Then unplugged the ethernet cord for security reasons.  I will try plugging in the Ethernet cord. But i remember doing this in the past and made no difference.

New wallets load withing 10 minutes. It's just the old wallets that take about an hour.

[LoyceV]

I am using Bitcoin core 22.0

That means it has to update your wallet.dat for all transactions made in the past 5 years. An hour isn't bad for that, it's takes a lot of disk reading.

I will try plugging in the Ethernet cord.

Don't do that! It doesn't matter for performance, but makes it more risky.

New wallets load withing 10 minutes. It's just the old wallets that take about an hour.

For a new wallet, 10 minutes is slow.

Is there another way I can accomplish this?

You can dump all addresses and check them elsewhere, but it's easiest to just let Bitcoin Core do it's thing.

[joe101]

Well i guess i have no choice but to wait.


For some wallets Bitcoin core shuts down after 40 minutes. I'm not sure why. Where can i check the logs?

Here is what i see for an hour

https://ibb.co/x65jCY9

[DaveF]

Check the debug.log file in the data directory to see what is happening: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory#Default_Location

As for the time it takes to open, part of the issue with moving wallet.dat files is that core will go through and scan the entire blockchain from the beginning if it has not seen that wallet.dat file before. Remember, it has no idea of what may or may not have changed and what transactions have been sent, so it's going to re-validate the entire thing.

New wallets should not take that long as @LoyceV said, but there could be other things happening in the background slowing the machine up.
What are it's specs? A new i7 is going to perform a lot better then a 6 gen old i3....

-Dave

[joe101]

I tried on 2 computers. Intel 2.i5-3340M 2.7Ghz and i7 860 2,8Ghz

I know this wallet has some bitcoin in it. About 50USD

When i open this wallet. It opens but Bitcoin core shuts down with no error message. It's only that wallet.


Is it safe to post everything in the debug.log here? Here is the end of the log. I put a * in the last line because i didn;t know what it was

Code:

2022-02-20T19:10:11Z Loaded 69152 addresses from peers.dat  313ms
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z Missing or invalid file D:\1-Bitcoin\anchors.dat
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z 0 block-relay-only anchors will be tried for connections.
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z init message: Starting network threads…
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z dnsseed thread start
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z Waiting 300 seconds before querying DNS seeds.
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z net thread start
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z addcon thread start
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z opencon thread start
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z init message: Done loading
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z msghand thread start
2022-02-20T19:10:11Z GUI: Platform customization: "windows"
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z Using BerkeleyDB version Berkeley DB 4.8.30: (April  9, 2010)
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z Using wallet D:\1-Bitcoin\wallets\wallet.dat
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z BerkeleyEnvironment::Open: LogDir=D:\1-Bitcoin\wallets\database ErrorFile=D:\1-Bitcoin\wallets\db.log
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z init message: Loading wallet…
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z [default wallet] Wallet File Version = 130000
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z [default wallet] Keys: 0 plaintext, 204 encrypted, 204 w/ metadata, 204 total. Unknown wallet records: 0
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z [default wallet] Wallet completed loading in              16ms
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z init message: Rescanning…
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z [default wallet] Rescanning last 724202 blocks (from block 0)...
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z [default wallet] Rescan started from block 000000000000000003***************************************************f60...

[DaveF]

2022-02-20T19:10:24Z init message: Rescanning…
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z [default wallet] Rescanning last 724202 blocks (from block 0)...
2022-02-20T19:10:24Z [default wallet] Rescan started from block 000000000000000003***************************************************f60...

So it is rescanning the entire blockchain. The 00000003***** is just the hash of a block you can copy & paste it into any block explorer and it should tell you what block it is.
724202 is just about the last block so that is fine.

Make a backup copy of the wallet.dat before you do anything else.
Then make another backup.

If it's not dumping an error into the debug file something is probably very corrupt with it.

Try to salvage the wallet.  A small discussion on it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5345802.0

-Dave

[joe101]

What if i downgrade back to the older bitcoin core? How do i know what version of Bitcoin core the wallet was made in. I think it was about 0.13 to 0.16

The wallet address is very old. Around the year 2016. Address starts with 1Cc




it worked! I ran into 2 problems. The wallet.dat file was set as read only. I right clicked and unchecked that. But it still wouldn't work on Bitcoin Core 0.22

I downgraded tried many different version and wouldn't load. Gave me errors.

When i got to version 14.3 it loaded fine but i could not see the balance. I went into the console and exported the private key and address. Good thing I still had the password.

I wish i knew earlier how to export private keys. Now i know. i thought the wallet.dat file and password was all i needed.

I am getting the feeling the wallet.dat files are unreliable

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]