Can I pay one of you experts to help me retrieve my armory wallet?

[cryptocurious84567]

I have paper backups and an encrypted wallet.dat file that I know the password to.   

I just cant get the client going to save my life.

Willing to pay a telegram buddy to walk me through buying the right type of machine, setting up, etc.   I have tried several times over the last 12 months and cant get it.

[goatpig]

I have paper backups and an encrypted wallet.dat file that I know the password to.   

Unless you had coins in an bitcoin-core wallet, wallet.dat is not useful.

Willing to pay a telegram buddy to walk me through buying the right type of machine, setting up, etc.   I have tried several times over the last 12 months and cant get it.

Simplest OS to setup for Armory is Windows. Most reliable one is Linux. Stay away from Macs.

For Windows, anything that runs Windows 7 and newer will work (please don't get something as old as Win7 though). For Linux, aim for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. You will need a 1TB drive ideally, You may get away with only 500GB (will be tight). Laptops are fine if it's all you have access to.

[Bitarock]

So you have the password and wallet file. Then i can help you unlock wallet quick
I can send you directions and you can do it yourself. If you promise pay me ill send directions.  How much bitcoin did you lose?
My email is  :Superbit1@protonmail.com

[cryptocurious84567]

Alright I will give it another shot.  I tried ubuntu last time.  I will push forward on both fronts. I will do a windows and Ubuntu and see if either can get going for me.

Should I use bitcoin core 22 or 23?

And yes, I mis-spoke about wallet.dat.   I meant to say I still have my offline armory computer.

[nc50lc]

Should I use bitcoin core 22 or 23?

The latest 23.0 should do,
but make sure to uncheck "prune block storage" during Bitcoin Core's initial setup since it's ticked by default and Armory wont work with it enabled.

And make sure Armory is in the latest version v0.96.5 as well.

[NeuroticFish]

buying the right type of machine

You will basically need some 400-500 GB for the blockchain. With OS and so on, I'd recommend at least 1TB of storage for the computer/laptop. This is the most important part. Also SSD would be nice (would improve greatly the time for the initial download and check of the blocks/blockchain).


Also I recommend you ask here on the forum, publicly, and get answers publicly. Doing the setup doesn't need private information and if you are doing it privately you can end up being scammed.

[cryptocurious84567]

Update: I spent $500 for a 5 year old 1 tB hard drive tower with windows 10 pro on it.

I spent $150 for a piece of shit tower for my offline computer. Literally the cheapest tower in the shop. Windows 10 pro running on it.

Got it all working without any headaches.

I battled with Ubuntu on a  laptop and an external drive for hours upon hours and never got it working.

Hope this helps others.

Suggestion: a pinned comment should reccommend Windows and not Ubuntu for non-techies.

[BitMaxz]

I battled with Ubuntu on a  laptop and an external drive for hours upon hours and never got it working.

Hope this helps others.

Suggestion: a pinned comment should reccommend Windows and not Ubuntu for non-techies.

It's easy to install on Windows without headaches it works well without any issues just make sure that your core is prune disabled to make the armory work properly.

About Ubuntu what guide did you follow? have you built it from the source?
If you follow the guide from btcarmory.com would you mind trying to follow the guide from this link below if you still want to make it work in Ubuntu? and yeah I agree that it is not for non-techy guys its easy to install it through Windows OS.

- https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory/blob/master/linuxbuild/Linux_build_notes.md

[uPgreg90]

My situation is similar to the OP in many ways. bitcoin core 0.24.01, armory 0.96.5, 64-bit.
Both installed (at least theoretically) to the external d: drive with 1TB storage. Armory displays a small banner screen with loading: 100% at the top.

Does it matter that I installed bitcoin core first, downloaded the blockchain and then synced up?
After that, I installed armory 0.96.5, but needed to change the path for armory to the d: drive after the initial install. I checked the status of the box "prune block storage" in bitcoin core, but that wasn't until after the initial installation.
How do I proceed? What checks do I run, which logs do you want posted in pastebin?

========================== more details - probably superfluous =============
I had a few logs for bitcoin, and then logs for armory before I set the armory windows shortcut icon to "run as administrator" and both directories for the path to the external drive. "target" is d:\armory\armoryqt.exe and "start in" is set to d:\armory. Both configurations are in the shortcut used to launch armory only. Not in a config file.
qt.conf has "Prefix = D:/armory/library.zip/PyQt4" and "Binaries = D:/armory/library.zip/PyQt4"
I have been attempting to run armory without having first launched bitcoin core. Does armory start bitcoin core automatically? Should I run bitcoinqt and then armoryqt?

========================== Some additional background ====================================
I installed both the cold storage - offline - wallet and the online wallet in 2014 on Windows 7 laptops. Not much difficulty was encountered. I used them a number of times without serious issues at that time. I synced up in about 2016 or 2017 and completely filled the hard drive where I had bitcoin core installed. The system was inoperable, so I cleaned it up and used an external drive for the blockchain files afterward. It came back and worked in 2017. 2019 and 2020: nightmare. Upgraded the online wallet to windows 10. Upgraded bitcoin core and armory versions.  If memory serves me correctly, armory worked in roughly that timeframe, but the online laptop encountered platform-related issues and I couldn't get armory to launch again successfully. This current installation is on new hardware and windows 11. It's a clean install.
Can anybody help?  I have the paper backup with password.

[goatpig]

Does it matter that I installed bitcoin core first, downloaded the blockchain and then synced up? 

It's better to do it in that order.

After that, I installed armory 0.96.5, but needed to change the path for armory to the d: drive after the initial install. I checked the status of the box "prune block storage" in bitcoin core, but that wasn't until after the initial installation. 

That's unfortunate, likely you have a pruned copy of the chain, that cannot be used as is by Armory, you would need to resync your node with the pruning off.

How do I proceed? What checks do I run, which logs do you want posted in pastebin? 

Make sure you have a full chain with Core then start ArmoryQt. If you get pathing issues, try with ArmoryDB on its own. The useful log files are armorylog.txt and armorydb.txt. You can find them in your armory data dir (defaults to C:\Users\*yourusername*\AppData\Roaming\Armory).

"target" is d:\armory\armoryqt.exe and "start in" is set to d:\armory.

This won't do much for you. You installed armory in D:\ but that's at most 100MB of data. The database which takes several gigs will go to the default folder mentioned before. What you are trying to do is to get Armory (and Core) to save their data in the D:\ drive.

This link will help you through that: https://btcarmory.com/docs/pathing