[REQUESTS] Minimal Electrum builds for Windows

[minimalB]

This version seems to work great and fast!

Donation sent!

BTW: I have only one server available (electrum.bysh.me). Is this normal?

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[ThomasV]

This version seems to work great and fast!

Donation sent!

BTW: I have only one server available (electrum.bysh.me). Is this normal?

thanks for the support!

New clients filter out all the old servers since the protocol has changed. For the moment there are only two servers running the new protocol:
electrum.bysh.me and ecdsa.org

[flatfly]

This version seems to work great and fast!

Donation sent!

BTW: I have only one server available (electrum.bysh.me). Is this normal?

Thanks!

I see ecdsa.org online as well now, and I believe more servers will upgrade very soon.

[slush]

flatfly, I just tested latest 1.5.4 build. Not displaying QR codes is known issue (seed, address on Receive tab)?

Btw any chance to pack Electrum with zbar package, which is available for Windows as well? It adds QR scanning features to Send dialog...

[slush]

Hm, looks like there are more bugs in 1.5.4 in general. 1.5.3 works for me nicely, too bad that Windows builds are not 1.5.3 :-(.

[flatfly]

Hi slush,

Thanks for trying the new build!

Yes the qr bugs are known issues, but the good news is that thomasv just fixed them on the github master! What other bugs have you noticed in 1.5.4?  If there are too many, I'll consider making a 1.5.3 build available as well until they're fixed.

About the zbar package, I usually try to keep my builds as lean as possible, but I'll see if I can include that (+ any required dependencies) in my main build without impacting the download size too much.

Also, as I often get requests for custom builds, and the time I can currently devote to this is quite limited, I usually give priority to donators

[dw_bc]

I using your build, but I changed GUI to Gtk.

Now, it now starts Gui mode.

Only when I run + SHIFT to select to GUI mode qt or lite.

How Can I fix to qt or lite? Via Regedit?

Good Work, and Thanks!

[flatfly]

I using your build, but I changed GUI to Gtk.

Now, it now starts Gui mode.

Only when I run + SHIFT to select to GUI mode qt or lite.

How Can I fix to qt or lite? Via Regedit?

Good Work, and Thanks!

Hi, thanks for trying my build

Indeed, some GUIs (gtk and text) are not supported in my build.
Regedit is not necessary to fix the issue you have, as Electrum doesn't save anything
to the Windows registry. The best way to solve the issue is to issue the following command
from the console:

 electrum set gui "qt"

This will set the default GUI back to Qt (classic).

[IveBeenBit]

I just downloaded and tried using your build from here: http://dre.redmartian.org/elecwin.htm

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

Anyways, I installed it, but it looks like the .exe is all there is to it. Is that right? Because when I double click electrum1.5.6-flatfly.exe, then it starts up.

I was also surprised that it did not do any setup, did not shaw a wallet seed or any of that. Is that normal?

Finally, it doesn't connect to anything. It just sits there saying "trying to connect" on the bottom.

Any idea where I should start trying to trouble shoot this? Or should I just use the official Electrum client?

[flatfly]

I just downloaded and tried using your build from here: http://dre.redmartian.org/elecwin.htm

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

Anyways, I installed it, but it looks like the .exe is all there is to it. Is that right? Because when I double click electrum1.5.6-flatfly.exe, then it starts up.

The above is normal: I've spent a lot of time to make my build totally self-contained so it doesn't require "installing", and does not touch the Windows system files in any way.

I was also surprised that it did not do any setup, did not shaw a wallet seed or any of that. Is that normal?

Finally, it doesn't connect to anything. It just sits there saying "trying to connect" on the bottom.

Any idea where I should start trying to trouble shoot this?

This is not normal - It is probably due to an old electrum.dat wallet file lying around on your hard disk from the old days, and pointing to a non-existing server... To fix the issue, find that file (in your Application Data folder, not sure about the exact path on Win7 x64), rename it to something else, and start Electrum again. It should then prompt you to create a new wallet (or restore an existing one from seed.)

Let me know how that goes so I can help you further if needed.

Or should I just use the official Electrum client?

You could give it a try, but I think it will exhibit the same behavior, as we're using the same codebase.

[IveBeenBit]

This is not normal - It is probably due to an old electrum.dat wallet file lying around on your hard disk from the old days, and pointing to a non-existing server... To fix the issue, find that file (in your Application Data folder, not sure about the exact path on Win7 x64), rename it to something else, and start Electrum again. It should then prompt you to create a new wallet (or restore an existing one from seed.)

Let me know how that goes so I can help you further if needed.

You were right. I did find an old electrum.dat file. The path, BTW is C:\Users\Windows Username\AppData\Local\Electrum\electrum.dat

It's probably leftover from when I tried Electrum back in August, but I honestly did not give it a fair shot back then.

I opened the file in Wordpad just to see what was in it. I see about 5 Bitcoin addresses. Does electrum.dat store the private keys to those addresses also? Where are the private keys stored?

I'm basically trying to make sure I keep my bitcoins safe and need to know what files to make encrypted backups of. I plan on importing my private keys that I already have from the QT client into my Electrum wallet.

Thanks for the help so far!

[flatfly]

This is not normal - It is probably due to an old electrum.dat wallet file lying around on your hard disk from the old days, and pointing to a non-existing server... To fix the issue, find that file (in your Application Data folder, not sure about the exact path on Win7 x64), rename it to something else, and start Electrum again. It should then prompt you to create a new wallet (or restore an existing one from seed.)

Let me know how that goes so I can help you further if needed.

You were right. I did find an old electrum.dat file. The path, BTW is C:\Users\Windows Username\AppData\Local\Electrum\electrum.dat

It's probably leftover from when I tried Electrum back in August, but I honestly did not give it a fair shot back then.

I opened the file in Wordpad just to see what was in it. I see about 5 Bitcoin addresses. Does electrum.dat store the private keys to those addresses also? Where are the private keys stored?

I'm basically trying to make sure I keep my bitcoins safe and need to know what files to make encrypted backups of. I plan on importing my private keys that I already have from the QT client into my Electrum wallet.

Thanks for the help so far!

Electrum.dat is the only file where all sensitive information is stored.
The private keys to those 5 (and any subsequent) addresses are not stored anywhere, they are dynamically computed from the seed, which is stored in the electrum.dat file. This is one of the great benefits of deterministic wallets: you only need to back up your wallet just once, and that's it!

Just be sure to use a strong password and the seed will always be stored in encrypted form, using AES256.

If, for any reason, you do need to access the private keys for each individual address, you can do so by issuing the following command:

Code:

electrum -oak addresses

[IveBeenBit]

Electrum.dat is the only file where all sensitive information is stored.
The private keys to those 5 (and any subsequent) addresses are not stored anywhere, they are dynamically computed from the seed, which is stored in the electrum.dat file. This is one of the great benefits of deterministic wallets: you only need to back up your wallet just once, and that's it!

Just be sure to use a strong password and the seed will always be stored in encrypted form, using AES256.

Thanks a lot for your time in explaining this. I think I only have 2 more questions (until I tackle figuring out offline wallets and trasnactions, that is). 

I found in the documentation how to import private keys:

Code:

$ ./electrum import 1LGoehbyeX4QBEPK1a6dhyaoMQZfqg5LKX:5JBSttEGhjEcPidSovW66Rin2EZ6LEHZ2qx8Pu2RqqNaDTBVWaF
keypair imported

Since those keys are not "deterministic," then they will need to be stored in electrum.dat, I guess. Will they be encrypted in there?

Also, I think I found the wallet seed in electrum.dat. It's 88 characters, with numbers, upper- and lower-case letters and some special characters. Is that the actual seed, or is that an encrypted version of the seed that I would have to enter a password to unlock?

Thanks again for the help.

[flatfly]

Since those keys are not "deterministic," then they will need to be stored in electrum.dat, I guess. Will they be encrypted in there?

Also, I think I found the wallet seed in electrum.dat. It's 88 characters, with numbers, upper- and lower-case letters and some special characters. Is that the actual seed, or is that an encrypted version of the seed that I would have to enter a password to unlock?

1. Sure, any imported private keys get encrypted as well.  However please note that electrum doesn't support importing compressed keys at this time. There is a pull request for this but it still needs to be adapted to the current codebase and merged in.
Anyway, the best practice is to avoid importing keys as much as possible, and send funds from bitcoin-qt to electrum addresses instead (if at all possible in your case) - this is to get the full benefits of deterministic wallets.

2.  That's the encrypted version of the seed (ending with equal signs). It can't be used without your password. The actual seed is a 128-bit high-entropy random number, which is usually displayed as either a 12-word mnemonic code or a 32-digit hex number.

Thanks again for the help.

No problem, always glad to help. I won't be online very much next week, though, but you can also get assistance in the main electrum thread or on the #electrum IRC channel.

[flatfly]

I've just released a stable build for version 1.5.7.
As usual, the download links can be found in the first post of this thread.

[minimalB]

The server is down  : /

[flatfly]

The server is down  : /

Sorry for that, it looks like an issue at my (cheap) hosting provider.
Not sure how long that will take to resolve, but in the meantime,
the direct download link is still available (hosted at Google Code, thankfully):

http://win-electrum.googlecode.com/files/elec-1.5.7-flatfly.exe    (6.3MB build, no dependencies)
 
SHA-1 hash: ea9d9a2717a9294d0c0374d2eda93170a35b539e

VirusTotal report

[minimalB]

Thanks!

In Lite mode: if you start typing previously saved Label in "Enter a recipient address..." field, whole string (label and address) is copied... string stays in RED color (indicating an error address) and I'm unable to send BTCs.

It works fine in classic mode, though.

Donation sent.

[hazek]

http://win-electrum.googlecode.com/files/elec-1.5.7-flatfly.exe    (6.3MB build, no dependencies)
 

This doesn't work for me under win7 64bit. The process runs, takes up about 3mb of memory and nothing happens. The first time I ran it it hung at the unpacking stage.

EDIT: nvm, got it to work, I had to manually find and delete all files and folders associated with electrum and I think the problem was I already had appdata\local\electrum\ with a wallet and blockchain headers from slushe's build..

[sethsethseth]

Where is a list of version changes?