Darn it

[madrigal]

Can Bitcoin Wallets be fixed if they go funny?

Do I really have to unistall and reinstall and let it synch for another two days?

Can I somehow retrieve the block data before doing this?

Can anyone help?

Luckily it was empty.

[stevegee58]

Can Bitcoin Wallets be fixed if they go funny?

Do I really have to unistall and reinstall and let it synch for another two days?

Can I somehow retrieve the block data before doing this?

Can anyone help?

Luckily it was empty.

No, yes, no, yes (yes)

[madrigal]

Thanks!  That's real bad news!

I think I'll have to stick to using Mt. Gox or an equivalent - I can't trust Bitcoin Walle - It's happened twice!

[deepceleron]

Posting the actual errors you are seeing would help you get an accurate answer of what to do.

Uninstalling and reinstalling Bitcoin won't help if one of the databases has been corrupted; the data and the program are kept separately on the computer, and the Bitcoin data/wallet directory is not removed by uninstalling the client program.

If you have never used your wallet addresses for anything, than the wallet file certainly doesn't need to be kept.

What if I were to upload a copy of the blockchain to the web, and post complete instructions for you, so you could quickly fix a corrupted blockchain? Oh, wait, I already did that in this newbie forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51456.0

[Red Emerald]

Thanks!  That's real bad news!

I think I'll have to stick to using Mt. Gox or an equivalent - I can't trust Bitcoin Walle - It's happened twice!

Why are you doing to your poor computer? I haven't lost any wallets...

[Stephen Gornick]

Can Bitcoin Wallets be fixed if they go funny?

They don't normally "go funny".   You probably are seeing something that either isn't clear as to what is happening or you are encountering a symptom of some other problem.

Do I really have to unistall and reinstall and let it synch for another two days?

If you already have the blockchain downloaded, you can let bitcoin recreate a new wallet from scratch by removing the old wallet.dat.

Can I somehow retrieve the block data before doing this?

Keeping the existing blk*.dat and removing everything else will give you a clean slate with whatever blockchain you previously had.
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

There are alternative clients as well.
Electrum, for instance: http://ecdsa.org/electrum
is a lightweight client that does not need to download the blockchain

[madrigal]

My PC crashed while Bitcoin Wallet was synchronizing.

It's too late, I unistalled and deleted the lot.

However, my new dowloaded version is not working now.

The error message is:

Runtime Error!

Program:[where the program is]

This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application support team for more information.

[Stephen Gornick]

Runtime Error!

Program:[where the program is]

To start clean, you can remove all data files (including the wallet) by deleting the entire directory:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

[madrigal]

Can I somehow retrieve the block data before doing this?

Keeping the existing blk*.dat and removing everything else will give you a clean slate with whatever blockchain you previously had.
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

Thanks, but which blk DAT should I keep? There are two: blk0001 and blkindex

[madrigal]

I deleted everything, but still getting the same message

[deepceleron]

Bad data in the database directory will typically not create a runtime error in the Bitcoin exe, you will get a more diagnostic message such as:

EXCEPTION: 11DbException
Db::open: Invalid  ...
...  called after throwing an instance of 'DbException'
what(): Db::open: Invalid  ...

You can rename the whole %APPDATA%\bitcoin directory to something like \bitcoin-backup, and re-run Bitcoin. If you still have the problem, nothing in the database directory was causing it, and likely you need to uninstall and reinstall the Bitcoin software, or fix an underlying hardware problem on your computer.

[madrigal]

Yeay! I deleted everything again, dowloaded and setup again, and it appears to be working!

Now I shall read with great interest your wonderful post deepceleron, so that I can speed things up!

Thanks muchly everyone!

madrigal