Topic: Bitcoin-Qt taking forever to sync. Progress sometimes goes back. (Read 25518 times)

Good evening fellows,

It is with great content that I inform you that my trials and tribulations through the bitcoin and entire internet currency world have come to an end and all was done just as it should have been. The thing that helped me the most was this https://blockchain.info/it/wallet/import-wallet . Many thanks to Gabi, her post directed me in the easyest way to surcomvent the whole synchronizing overture. B.I.G. shout out to DannyHamilton as well, you were a lot of help, ma man!

Much love, people!


P.S. I feel like a whole new world of trading has opened up!

I reach into my back pocket and pull paper (linen) money out of my leather wallet all the time.  My wallet doesn't have any accounts in it, just an address (leather wallet, my back pocket).  I can add money to that wallet by moving it to that address. I thought that was why it was decided to call it a "wallet", so people wouldn't expect it to have "accounts".

People are still attached to the fact that they must have an account to manage their money, lol. Like Matrix, people won't accept that it's just a prison

I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you asking about your Bitcoin-QT client, or your online wallet?

You don't have a client account number. You have one or more addresses that your client/wallet keeps track of for you. (With the online wallet you may also have a Wallet Identifer that you'll want to keep track of to log in).

You can see some of those addresses in the "Receive Coins" tab of the Bitcoin-QT client (or on various web pages if you are using the online wallet).

If you have sent payments from the Bitcoin-QT wallet in the past, you may also have a few addresses that the wallet knows about and keeps track of, but doesn't tell you about.  It does this with the "change" from transactions where you sent bitcoins.

Example: You want to send 1 BTC, but only have a single 5 BTC output in your addresses.  The Bitcoin-QT creates a transaction using this 5 BTC as an input, and sends the 1 BTC to your intended destination address while creating a new address that you don't know about to send the remaining 4 BTC back into your wallet.

To see the list of these hidden addresses you can use the listreceivedbyaddress command from my earlier post.

Yup, once you load the wallet in a client, it will automatically show your addresses

Your wallet address should be under the recieve coins tab in your bitcoin client, I think thats what he wants to know ?

Or multibit https://multibit.org/

What? You have no account, you have private keys. Each private key correspond to a public key with is used to receive bitcoin. (private key is used to send coins, so never share it)

I recommend electrum.

Did what?

I tired several times in the beginning to get this to work with no luck. I ended up having to delete the blockchain data and download it from somewhere else. No matter what I did it would get stuck at a certain percentage for days until I did this.

Thanks you guys! One last question (for now) - how do I get the my bitcoin address, I mean, where can I find the combination of numbers that signify my bitcoin account client number?

Those instructions are outdated.  It is still difficult for the average user to get their private key, but it isn't as difficult as all that anymore.

I thought that blockchain.info had a desktop sync function so you wouldn't have to get your private key, did that not work for you?

If you really want to know what your private keys are, delete that bitcoin.conf file (be careful not to delete anything else in that directory).

Start up your bitcoin client.

Navigate to the Help menu, and choose "Debug window".

In the Debug Window, choose "Console".

You can use the commands found at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls_list to communicate here.

In particular the commands you want are:

To unlock your wallet if you have a password/encryption set up.  The 600 means to unlock the wallet for 600 seconds. You can lengthen or shorten this time limit as you see fit. replace the yourPassword with whatever your password actually is.

Will list all of the bitcoin addresses in your wallet that have bitcoins associated with them. This step will not be necessary for you if you've never sent bitcoins from this wallet before.  However, if you have ever sent any bitcoins, it is possible that some of your bitcoins may be associated with a "change" address from that sending transaction.  This "change" address won't show up in your "Receive Coins" tab, but will show up in this listreceivedbyaddress list.

Where bitcoinAddress is the bitcoin address for which you are trying to get the private key.

And that is a thing that should be much much simpler but today is still hard to do.

Ok well, are you sure your file is named .conf and isn't .conf.txt?

On a side note.. do you know that you could just drag and drop wallet.dat here https://blockchain.info/it/wallet/import-wallet and be done? 

Hm-hm, so basically this happened:

I tried to set up my client to the online wallet I created through the desctop sync function it provides in order to speed the process up, seeing as how I've been waiting for the client to 'catch up' for two days now, after it got stuck on 98.70% (what a bummer, I know). I used this tutorial:

   
I can help!

Your money is "yours", it just isn't being listed in your wallet because as you say, your wallet is having trouble updating... Thats ok! You can access it other ways, such as an online e-wallet:

First, we need to get your "private key":

    Close bitcoin completely, then

    Open control panel, select "large icons" in the top right corner

    Click "folder options", or if you are opening it from the start menu, just click "folder options"

    Click the "view" tab

    under "hidden files and folders", click "show hidden files and folders and drives"

    Deselect "hide extensions of known file types" this will allow you to see the bitcoin working folder

    press OK

    right click the start button and click "open windows explorer"

    doubleclick "local disk (c:)" under "my computer"

    doubleclick "users"

    doubleclick "yourusername" eg "john"

    doubleclick "appdata"

    doubleclick "roaming"

    doubleclick the "bitcoin" folder

(this is for win 7, for xp the directory is C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application data\Bitcoin (XP))

    right click an empty area in the folder and select "new">"text document"

    doubleclick the new text document

    type the following 2 lines into the empty text document:

    rpcuser=someusername

    rpcpassword=somepassword

    replace someusername and somepassword with anything (you dont have to remember it later) so button mashing udhf9w8dg98rgu will work (no spaces)

    "file">"save as" type "bitcoin.conf"

    press save

    Right click the start button and click "open windows explorer"

    doubleclick "local disk (c:)" under "my computer"

    doubleclick "program files(x86)"

    doubleclick "bitcoin"

    hold shift and right click on "daemon"

    click "open command window here"

    type "bitcoind"

    leave that window open,

    Wait 2 minutes for the daemon to load

    Don't close the window

    Go back to the explorer window, and again,

    Hold shift and right click on "daemon"

    Click "open command window here"

If your wallet is encrypted, goto A then proceed to B if not go straight to B

    A: type "bitcoind walletpassphrase 600" where walletpassphrase is your wallet password and press enter

    B: type "bitcoind dumpprivkey 1YourBitcoinAddress1234567890"
        replace 1YourBitcoinAddress1234567890 with the address where you withdrew the money to. You will get a long string of numbers. leave this window open...

Upload the private key to a managed service

    Goto blockchain.info

    click "wallet" at the top

    click "start a new wallet"

    sign up for a new wallet

    once your new wallet is created, log in to it.

    goto the tab that says "import/export"

    press "continue" at the warning

    where it says "import private key", type the long string of number EXACTLY from the black window

    press "add private key"

Your wallet is now managed online.


Everything went allright up until the final point, when things seem to just be against me. Now, my IT skills are novice at best, but still... I create the file, password, username, the works, I load the deamon, load it again, type in everything as I should, but the exe console simply tells me this: 'error: You must set rpcpassword= in the configuration file (shows directory). If the file does not exist, create it with owner-readable-only file permission'. All's well, but I created this file, along with the password, the whole thing seems just not be responding to any change. Any thoughts? Basically my question is - how do I get my private key, because this is not working...

Glad to here I am not the only one that thought this and thanks for the answer.

just wait - it will catch up

Hi everyone. I'm new to bitcoin so I would ask for a solution as I have a problem with the client.

It had synced to 98% when my laptop shut down. When I reopened the client the loading bar was gone and the program is now said to be 'catching up'. The number of total blocks to be loaded is moving but the actually synced blocks remain the same.

I have already received some bitcoins to the address so I have to be careful with the situation. What can you advise me? I need to send some bitcoins soon. Shall I just wait for the Qt client to load again or shall I use some online wallet?

you can use a different client if this bothers you, like multibit for an example. or you can use online wallets

Yes it is normal Bitcoin took around 7 hours to download on my server and my server is running on a 1 Gigabit connection.

i think it is because of the verification of the block that takes the most time. and the first few blocks will download and verify fast as they have less transaction in them and they become slow after you have downloaded about 60% of the blocks.

thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated