Electrum, have seed, lost password - cannot send coins?

[MatrixSS]

Hi guys,

So basically I have an electrum wallet and at the time (3 months ago), I don't remember setting any password or anything. I have tried everything I could think of to no avail. So to my understanding, if I have the seed (12 words), I should be able to view and send coins from the wallet the seed belongs to? When I delete the wallet.dat file from electrum roaming folder, I choose to generate a wallet from a seed and enter my seed, then it asks me to enter a password, I either leave it blank (no decryption) or enter one.

No matter what I do, after the password phase and clicking, "next" or whatever, electrum crashes. Then when I boot it up again, it shows my balance and everyting from the wallet, but when I try to send coins, it asks for a password?! It was to my understanding on a separate computer, it shouldn't ask for a password?

Just needing some help please!

tl;dr cannot remember password, have seed, try to restore wallet from seed, when entering new password, electrum crashes, reboot electrum, balance is there, cannot spend, asks for pasword

[MasterYii]

have you tried re-installing electrum?

[MatrixSS]

I haven't tried re-installing on the original computer, but installed electrum on another computer and same error. I just put on a fresh windows 7 on a third separate computer, loading drivers now, so I will try on that computer shortly. I'm glad to know this is abnormal though.

[MatrixSS]

To update, I have tried on a computer with freshly installed windows 7 operating system, and I am getting the exact same thing. Electrum crashes as soon as I click 'next' to go to the main program after setting/not setting a password and I don't get access to my wallet.

[MatrixSS]

Okay, I have just tried on a FOURTH separate computer, freshly installed windows 7 64-bit as well, same thing....very confused. Can anyone offer any advice?

[Bernard Lerring]

If you're installing on a computer that's never had electrum on it then it should create a fresh wallet.dat file with a new password of your choice.

You must have written the seed down wrongly. You can check the seed for spelling mistakes, otherwise you have little chance of accessing your former wallet.

You can install electrum on a Ubuntu live CD to check if the seed works. The wallet.dat file will be lost when you turn off the computer but at least you'll then know that your seed works.

[bitbaby]

There must be something wrong with the seed, I can't think of any other reason why what you're doing shouldn't work. Since you deleted the wallet.dat, I think you wouldn't have access to the keys inside wallet, would you? Otherwise you could have imported those keys to any other wallet and use your funds. Try "Standalone Executable" version of it to see if it works.

[pooya87]

how many transactions did you have on your addresses, light wallets can crash under heavy number of transactions.
also try deleting the file blockchain_headers i had same trouble with it but after deleting, it was fixed

[MatrixSS]

There must be something wrong with the seed, I can't think of any other reason why what you're doing shouldn't work. Since you deleted the wallet.dat, I think you wouldn't have access to the keys inside wallet, would you? Otherwise you could have imported those keys to any other wallet and use your funds. Try "Standalone Executable" version of it to see if it works.

I tried to use a linux live cd last night, but linux ubuntu 14.04 is really screwed up on both my computers lol. I have like 1 million little screens on it and can't put in any drivers or anything because I can't see any of the program screens because they flicker crazily

Thanks for everyone else's suggestions, but nothing has worked so far. I still have to try the last method though that was suggested here. I also installed a windows xp vm (so this is the fifth environment I've tried), same thing, it crashes. Even if it was the wrong seed, why is it crashing? Seems more of a bug, than anything else. I am going to try a different seed because originally I wrote down the 12 words on a piece of paper, but this whole time, I'm not entirely sure what the last word is, since I was writing it down in a hurry and the last word isn't legible. But i'm 70% sure that I have the right last word, but I'll try again. Going to look up the list of possible words, I believe there are 1600 possibilities.

I'll report back.

[MatrixSS]

Okay.....back.....and feeling stupid!

So anyway, it was the wrong seed, the last word was really hard to decipher, but with the help of my bro, we figured what the last word was! I have successfully recovered my wallet from the seed. Thank you to everyone for all their help and suggestions! Sorry for kinda wasting everyone's time! But I feel reealllyyyy relieved now, thanks everyone!

[Simon8x]

Okay.....back.....and feeling stupid!

So anyway, it was the wrong seed, the last word was really hard to decipher, but with the help of my bro, we figured what the last word was! I have successfully recovered my wallet from the seed. Thank you to everyone for all their help and suggestions! Sorry for kinda wasting everyone's time! But I feel reealllyyyy relieved now, thanks everyone!

Nice to see all problems are solved finally. That is the problem of writing down password/seed/private key as you may somehow carelessly miswrite a letter or make it hard to read in the future.
In the future, try print the seed out or writ the seed on two different papers.

[bhantom]

glad you got it sorted out, lost count the amount of times I've lost passwords written on random pieces of paper

[bitbaby]

Glad you got your wallet back, If you have a separate usb that you can keep safe I would suggest storing your keys there, in-case this happens again and you lose access to your wallet, you can import keys in any other wallet and use your funds.