Disconnected from my BitCoins?

[chuckie]

Hi All

I think the answer to this is bad luck - but just in case....

I mined some shares with deepbit.net and have been paid to an address I created in bitcoin-qt. My PC died and my wallet was not backed up (in fact I never even saw these payments hit my wallet).

I can see my 100ths here: https://blockexplorer.com/address/1BDJhFtrQhHay54aDQKxAszMM7cePz7xPF

It is possible to claim these and put them in a new wallet or are they lost for ever?

I'm a real novice and I don't fully understand.

Thanks

[OnkelPaul]

If your private key (which is stored in the wallet) is lost, you can't access the bitcoins. Nobody can, so even if you manage to convince everybody that you are the rightful owner of these coins, nobody would be able to help you.

Consider this cheap tuition for the "why you should do backups" course.


Onkel Paul

[chuckie]

Thanks Onkel - I had a feeling in would be bad news (but cheap as you say).

I do have a backup but I don't know if it was from the right time (the one with this receiving address). To try it would I: stop bitcoin-qt, copy the wallet.dat from the old bitcoin folder to the new one and restart bitcoin-qt? If this is the correct procedure would I then be able to see the receiving address somewhere?a

[OnkelPaul]

bitcoin-qt generates 100 private keys with corresponding addresses in advance, so chances are good that if you have a not too old backup of your wallet.dat you might have the private key for this address in that wallet. In that case, bitcoin-qt will show the balance of this address (and you will see the transaction in the transactions pane) when you start it with this wallet.dat.
So if your current wallet.dat is really unused (that means that you did not use an address from this new wallet.dat for pool mining payout or so), you can stop bitcoin-qt, replace its wallet.dat with the one from the backup, and restart it.
Whatever you do, be careful to keep both wallet.dat files safe somewhere in case you mix something up. I think there's an option to merge a wallet.dat, too, but I never had a situation where I'd want that, so I don't know how it works - and I might be totally mistaken about this option, too.

Onkel Paul

[BiTJack]

Thanks Onkel - I had a feeling in would be bad news (but cheap as you say).

I do have a backup but I don't know if it was from the right time (the one with this receiving address). To try it would I: stop bitcoin-qt, copy the wallet.dat from the old bitcoin folder to the new one and restart bitcoin-qt? If this is the correct procedure would I then be able to see the receiving address somewhere?a

yes, if you have a backup copy of your wallet.dat just throw it in the /roaming folder and let the qt sync up.
i think all your transactions will be there with your correct balance.