Electrum not opening, lost seed. Help needed ***Reward***

[Eskimo]

Hi
As of today Electrum 1.9.8 isn't opening, after the icon is clicked it looks like it's going to open but nothing happens. Also it doesn't show up in Windows Task Manager. I've tried a couple of methods detailed in some other threads but in case I did them incorrectly I'd like to proceed as if I haven't. I've lost the seed but know the password, and if anyone's help proves successful I'd be happy to give them 1 btc or so.

Thanks

[Eskimo]

OS is Windows 7 Professional if that helps.

[jonald_fyookball]

Do you have a second machine?  Copy the wallet.dat file to that machine and try opening it.

[Abdussamad]

I've tried a couple of methods detailed in some other threads but in case I did them incorrectly I'd like to proceed as if I haven't.

How about telling us what you've tried so we don't waste time repeating ourselves? It's very hard to mess up finding a folder and deleting one file in it.

[Eskimo]

Do you have a second machine?  Copy the wallet.dat file to that machine and try opening it.

Would that be the default_wallet file? If so I've tried that and the other electrum (on another machine) didn't seem to recognize that file as when I clicked file-open nothing happened.

[Eskimo]

I've tried a couple of methods detailed in some other threads but in case I did them incorrectly I'd like to proceed as if I haven't.

How about telling us what you've tried so we don't waste time repeating ourselves? It's very hard to mess up finding a folder and deleting one file in it.

Sure, I copied the default_wallet file to another computer and tried to open with electrum on that machine. I also deleted the config file but that had no effect. Thanks for the response so far.

[Tachikoma]

I've created a version of 1.9.8 for you that includes a debug window. Please make a screenshot of any potential error messages you find there.

Download Electrum 1.9.8-dev and the signature.

Now before you open it please go to the official Electrum site verify https is enabled and the domain is correct. Then look for my pgp key (Maran Hidskes) there and verify the signature. Here is a step-by-step guide for doing that on windows.

Only after completing these steps run the app and give me the information it gives you.

[dabura667]

1. Copy the default_wallet file to a safe place while you do this, just in case you mess something up.

2. Open default_wallet with Wordpad. (Not Notepad)

3. Search for the word "seed" and tell me if you see something like this:

Code:

'seed': 'hGt+sQGFlt7Dhgb3a1kHetNJmlxrMQrZ3D8mheYgVr79ZEGOZK1btAzv44QMwGQ2K+1a/1ct10abxrX56OtvFA==',

If you see this, then your bitcoins are safe. This is your seed encrypted using AES with your password.


Tell me if you found this. I can help you recover your bitcoins if you have this.

[Eskimo]

1. Copy the default_wallet file to a safe place while you do this, just in case you mess something up.

2. Open default_wallet with Wordpad. (Not Notepad)

3. Search for the word "seed" and tell me if you see something like this:

Code:

'seed': 'hGt+sQGFlt7Dhgb3a1kHetNJmlxrMQrZ3D8mheYgVr79ZEGOZK1btAzv44QMwGQ2K+1a/1ct10abxrX56OtvFA==',

If you see this, then your bitcoins are safe. This is your seed encrypted using AES with your password.


Tell me if you found this. I can help you recover your bitcoins if you have this.

Nothing appears, just an empty document. Take it the btc are not recoverable?

[Abdussamad]

What other files have you got in the electrum folder? Give us a list of files and folders or post a screenshot. For the record electrum folder is \Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Local\Electrum

Also do you have a copy of that folder or your wallet backed up somewhere?

[Eskimo]

I've created a version of 1.9.8 for you that includes a debug window. Please make a screenshot of any potential error messages you find there.

Download Electrum 1.9.8-dev and the signature.

Now before you open it please go to the official Electrum site verify https is enabled and the domain is correct. Then look for my pgp key (Maran Hidskes) there and verify the signature. Here is a step-by-step guide for doing that on windows.

Only after completing these steps run the app and give me the information it gives you.

This is a printscreen of what came up - http://postimg.org/image/4ys7re7fp/. Thanks

[dabura667]

I've created a version of 1.9.8 for you that includes a debug window. Please make a screenshot of any potential error messages you find there.

Download Electrum 1.9.8-dev and the signature.

Now before you open it please go to the official Electrum site verify https is enabled and the domain is correct. Then look for my pgp key (Maran Hidskes) there and verify the signature. Here is a step-by-step guide for doing that on windows.

Only after completing these steps run the app and give me the information it gives you.

This is a printscreen of what came up - http://postimg.org/image/4ys7re7fp/. Thanks

I agree with Abdu.

Please tell us every file and folder that exists in your x:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Electrum folder (where x is your system drive and <user> is your windows username)

Then also tell us every file that exists in the "wallets" folder within the above folder.

If you can, maybe take a screenshot, we can see what you are dealing with.


This doesn't look too good... but if you have another wallet file or copy of the file... perhaps it's there...?

[Eskimo]

I've now moved back all the files that were in the electrum folder originally which consists of a cert folder (no changes were made to this folder), wallets folder containing default_wallet file and the blockchain headers and config files.

[Abdussamad]

If you don't have another wallet file in that folder then the only option is to look at backups. Do you have backups? Another thing you can try is Windows system restore to restore to an earlier time.

[Eskimo]

If you don't have another wallet file in that folder then the only option is to look at backups. Do you have backups? Another thing you can try is Windows system restore to restore to an earlier time.

No I don't have a backup, I'll try a system restore. Thanks

[Eskimo]

If you don't have another wallet file in that folder then the only option is to look at backups. Do you have backups? Another thing you can try is Windows system restore to restore to an earlier time.

No I don't have a backup, I'll try a system restore. Thanks

Tried the sytsem restore, still not working. Any other ideas anyone?

[Tachikoma]

If you opened default_wallet and it's an empty file your wallet is gone unless there is an other file in your wallets folder. Please make a screenshot of your wallets folder contents with filesize showing so we can know if there is anything salvable.

[Eskimo]

http://postimg.org/image/yb1gjwj77/
http://postimg.org/image/7gclvvnd7/

[Abdussamad]

http://postimg.org/image/yb1gjwj77/
http://postimg.org/image/7gclvvnd7/

The wallet file is not empty and you still have the blockchain_headers and config files. Delete blockchain_headers and config files and run electrum. If it still doesn't start up then open up the default_wallet file in notepad and see if you can see the seed that dabura667 was talking about before. Notepad is a text editor while wordpad is a word processor. I think you'll have better luck with notepad.

[dabura667]

http://postimg.org/image/yb1gjwj77/
http://postimg.org/image/7gclvvnd7/

I think I know why you "saw nothing"

Did you drag default_wallet and drop it on Wordpad? This does not open the file. This is how you paste images.
You have to click "Open" to open files...

but either way... I just remembered wallet files don't have line breaks anyways, so Notepad is fine.


Open the default_wallet with Notepad and try finding the "seed" area.

http://0bin.net/paste/aOXhNOA+aaO06p91#NyNjnyWkEt0Tga6PxCTgASmMcyChXKFkz+13SPM7F86

Here's a simple script I set up to decrypt the seed. You just need to replace the 'a' part at the top with your password and the '<seed_gibberish>' with your actual seed.

Then just run that script through python.

You should get some letters and numbers that look like this:

Code:

cfad59dfc9babdfcfbad95r957234524

If it doesn't look like this, and it's a bunch of invalid characters (ie not letters and numbers, but weird machine code looking stuff) then your password or your seed is wrong (remember to copy over the entire seed including = signs etc. and remember that both your password and the encrypted seed must be surrounded by ' apostrophes.

So if your password was cat:

Code:

seed_password = 'cat'

etc.

Once you have this 32 character long hexadecimal string of numbers and letters, you can actually paste that into Electrum's "Seed restore" box as-is and it will restore your bitcoins (you don't need to know the word phrase. The word phrase is just masking this hex number, and Electrum can recognize it.

Rename default_wallet into default_wallet2 or something, then try starting Electrum. It should show up with a wizard. paste in the hex string you got, and your bitcoins should be restored.

As far as where you can run the code... you could download Python and install it, then run the script on your computer.

Or if you want to trust me, I can compile the script into an exe file for running on your windows machine.

If you'd like to download Python, click here.

https://www.python.org/download

Download one of the two following:

32-bit Windows 7 = Python 2.7.8 Windows Installer (Windows binary -- does not include source)
64-bit Windows 7 = Python 2.7.8 Windows X86-64 Installer (Windows AMD64 / Intel 64 / X86-64 binary [1] -- does not include source)

I am not sure if the script works with Python 3... which is why I am not recommending it. (I have 2.7.