What does "restore" exactly do?

[takuma sato]

Does the "Restore wallet" on the GUI do anything else that isn't simply creating a wallet folder inside the /.bitcoin/wallets/[nameofwalletfolder]/ and then makes a copy of wallet.dat in there, or does it do anything else?

How is [nameofwalletfolder] name choosen? im assuming it cannot overwrite an existing wallet.dat if you select the same wallet name for the folder..

I don't think I will be using this, why not just manually create a folder with the name you want and put the wallet.dat file in there.

[achow101]

Does the "Restore wallet" on the GUI do anything else that isn't simply creating a wallet folder inside the /.bitcoin/wallets/[nameofwalletfolder]/ and then makes a copy of wallet.dat in there, or does it do anything else?

That's pretty much what it does.

How is [nameofwalletfolder] name choosen? im assuming it cannot overwrite an existing wallet.dat if you select the same wallet name for the folder..

The user types it in a dialog. It cannot be the name of a wallet that already exists.

I don't think I will be using this, why not just manually create a folder with the name you want and put the wallet.dat file in there.

Because not all users can figure that out.

[BattleDog]

Does the "Restore wallet" on the GUI do anything else that isn't simply creating a wallet folder inside the /.bitcoin/wallets/[nameofwalletfolder]/ and then makes a copy of wallet.dat in there, or does it do anything else?

That's pretty much what it does.

How is [nameofwalletfolder] name choosen? im assuming it cannot overwrite an existing wallet.dat if you select the same wallet name for the folder..

The user types it in a dialog. It cannot be the name of a wallet that already exists.

I don't think I will be using this, why not just manually create a folder with the name you want and put the wallet.dat file in there.

Because not all users can figure that out.

Well, if you're going to run Bitcoin Core, especially nowadays when you need so much storage space, I think you're not going to be the kind that doesn't know how to copy the wallet.dat to a folder manually

[MainMan79]

How is [nameofwalletfolder] name choosen? im assuming it cannot overwrite an existing wallet.dat if you select the same wallet name for the folder..

The user types it in a dialog. It cannot be the name of a wallet that already exists.

I used Restore Wallet and chose the wallet.dat file that was originally created in 2017 but copied from an old computer three years later. The name I chose was 'w1'. The Bitcoin Core software (v. 28.1.0) took 9+ hours to complete the 'Restore' procedure. When it completed, the wallet is showing 0.0000 mbtc, and no recent transactions.

This is the wallet I encrypted and lost/forgot password to back in 2017. It has *some* bitcoin and I planned to try a few password combinations, once more.

Two questions:
1) could 'w1' name be a problem? Is it possible old wallet.dat needs an 'old school' name to be recognized by the current bitcoin core software?
2) I never saved the full FOLDER when the old computer was still operational - only the wallet.dat. And I read on the forums here the wallet.dat file could be corrupted, and I SHOULD HAVE saved the full folder containing wallet.dat What is my next step to see if I can even 'revive' this wallet - in the new software - so I can try to remember my password? I tried Open wallet and Migrate wallet - but it's likely I made a newbie mistake that prevented me from properly 'loading' the wallet and seeing my btc balance in GUI

[achow101]

The Bitcoin Core software (v. 28.1.0) took 9+ hours to complete the 'Restore' procedure.

That means it was rescanning the wallet.

1) could 'w1' name be a problem? Is it possible old wallet.dat needs an 'old school' name to be recognized by the current bitcoin core software?

No, the name doesn't matter.

2) I never saved the full FOLDER when the old computer was still operational - only the wallet.dat. And I read on the forums here the wallet.dat file could be corrupted, and I SHOULD HAVE saved the full folder containing wallet.dat

That is possible, and any data that was not compacted into the wallet.dat at the time that you made the backup would be lost.

What is my next step to see if I can even 'revive' this wallet - in the new software - so I can try to remember my password?

It is restored so you can try to guess your password. That is independent of whether any transactions are found. You can try to rescan it again with the rescanblockchain RPC to see if it finds your transactions.