Topic: Cannot recover electrum wallet with 12 seed electrum phrase (Read 359 times)
you can remove the drive form the old laptop and use it in a new machine. coffee spilt does not mean that the drive is damaged.
I'd say it's much more likely for a user to make a mistake, than for Electrum to give the wrong seed phrase.
Maybe so but on the other hand, we can't really know for sure, can we? At least not until the matter receives a more in depth investigation and recovery attempt on his hard drive. Hopefully the service he uses doesn't cost too much and he can report back how they were able to successfully get his wallet off that tea stained platter. I wanna pull out the popcorn on this one!
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unfortunately Electrum UI doesn't provide proper error messages to user to know where exactly the problem is coming from.
unfortunately Electrum UI doesn't provide proper error messages to user to know where exactly the problem is coming from.
of course not. no self-respecting wallet is going to just come out and tell you what the problem is. you're not supposed to know those kind of things. that's for devs to ponder over, not users themselves.
But he said he entered the words down on paper very carefully. but people are insisting he made a mistake. that doesn't make any sense. those two things don't jive. i tend to believe him that he did write them down correctly because he insisted that was the case not just once but twice in this thread.
I've already covered all the possible scenarios that I can think of in my initial comment in this thread. I can't think of any other reason for this happening and unfortunately Electrum UI doesn't provide proper error messages to user to know where exactly the problem is coming from. A third party tool (used on an airgap system) is needed.As LoyceV said it is very unlikely for Electrum to have a bug in this case, the seed class is pretty straight forward.
But he said he entered the words down on paper very carefully. but people are insisting he made a mistake. that doesn't make any sense.
I'd say it's much more likely for a user to make a mistake, than for Electrum to give the wrong seed phrase. It is not about Electrum working properly or not, it is about the user writing the words on paper correctly. Doing everything from scratch to recover the wallet (eg. re-boot into cold storage OS, install Electrum, enter 12 words, etc.) makes sure they have done things correctly. It also has the benefit of actually trying to recover and learn how it should be done, like an exercise.
But he said he entered the words down on paper very carefully. but people are insisting he made a mistake. that doesn't make any sense. those two things don't jive. i tend to believe him that he did write them down correctly because he insisted that was the case not just once but twice in this thread.
If I can't recover the previous hard drive then I will try this brute force recovery or someone who has experience with recovery.
I would try brute forcing yourself first. In the event that you've simply misspelled a single word or swapped the location of two of your words, which are the most common errors people make, then the number of possibilities required to be brute forced is very low (24576 for a single incorrect word and only 132 for two swapped words) and could be done in a matter of seconds with the correct btcrecover set up. Even if all 12 words are in the wrong order you can descramble them in under an hour with reasonable hardware.The readthedocs page I linked to earlier in this thread talks you through installing Python and btcrecover and is fairly comprehensive. If you run in to any problems, then let us know.
-snip- and put it in rice ... yeah I know.
Oh no, that's our *Secret Asian Technique* to keep the moisture at bay :DBut I believe he already contacted someone (hopefully a trusted professional) to recover the drive as a response to LoyceV's suggestion.
Just a tip. If you don't have an external hard drive box or cables and you cannot borrow them from someone. The fact that you spilled tea on your laptop not always means that the laptop is dead, of course if there were smoke coming out or sparks it's totally different case but it's less likely. Take away any batteries if possible and put it in rice ... yeah I know.
Basically nowadays the PCBs are protected with special coating to protect it from moisture, circuit shorting and bla bla and you can basically wash your motherboard in the sink (only the board, not the whole PC!!) I had many cases when coffee, cola or water had drowned a laptop but after a few days of drying all is back to normal. If it's not cleaned and dried properly after some time I've seen some corroded elements so the laptop won't have a long life if it's not threaded the way it should be, but for the case of wallet recovery should be fine.
All this has to be done with the warning that if you power it ON and it wasn't dry enough or had other damage there could be a "bang". It's not common but as it's not common to win a lottery well, there's always someone to win lottery, tho. Keep in mind, all is risk.
Good luck
Basically nowadays the PCBs are protected with special coating to protect it from moisture, circuit shorting and bla bla and you can basically wash your motherboard in the sink (only the board, not the whole PC!!) I had many cases when coffee, cola or water had drowned a laptop but after a few days of drying all is back to normal. If it's not cleaned and dried properly after some time I've seen some corroded elements so the laptop won't have a long life if it's not threaded the way it should be, but for the case of wallet recovery should be fine.
All this has to be done with the warning that if you power it ON and it wasn't dry enough or had other damage there could be a "bang". It's not common but as it's not common to win a lottery well, there's always someone to win lottery, tho. Keep in mind, all is risk.
Good luck
Thanks all for your feedback. If I can't recover the previous hard drive then I will try this brute force recovery or someone who has experience with recovery.
That shouldn't really be necessary though. If electrum really works properly that is. But i guess anyone reading this thread will always do that from now on lol.
It is not about Electrum working properly or not, it is about the user writing the words on paper correctly. Doing everything from scratch to recover the wallet (eg. re-boot into cold storage OS, install Electrum, enter 12 words, etc.) makes sure they have done things correctly. It also has the benefit of actually trying to recover and learn how it should be done, like an exercise. imagine saving your electrum seed phrase very carefully and then you can't recover it.
It's very easy to prevent this by test-recovering your seed phrase before funding the wallet.That shouldn't really be necessary though. If electrum really works properly that is. But i guess anyone reading this thread will always do that from now on lol.
Isn't it a part of new wallet creation? Electrum force you to repeat the given seed.
It does. But I prefer to be more thorough 
imagine saving your electrum seed phrase very carefully and then you can't recover it.
It's very easy to prevent this by test-recovering your seed phrase before funding the wallet.Isn't it a part of new wallet creation? Electrum force you to repeat the given seed.
imagine saving your electrum seed phrase very carefully and then you can't recover it.
It's very easy to prevent this by test-recovering your seed phrase before funding the wallet.
imagine saving your electrum seed phrase very carefully and then you can't recover it. electrum might have some type of bug i wouldn't doubt it. it doesn't even run on my windows machine anymore. just stopped working completely. but i found a different computer to recover my coin.
@abacusplatypus, if none of the above tips help, there is someone who is very likely to be able to help you, but that help is not free - the man has been in the business for a long time, and has an impeccable reputation.
Bitcoin Wallet Recovery Services
Bitcoin Wallet Recovery Services
(this is no longer possible on newer versions of Electrum)
Interesting. Thank you.
I've corrected the other post to match the actual reality.
So if you put Electrum seed into Ian Coleman site I expect you end up with different addresses.
It actually just states "Invalid mnemonic" and will not let you proceed, unless you happened to create an Electrum seed phrase which is also a valid BIP39 seed phrase (this is no longer possible on newer versions of Electrum).But there is a fork of that project: https://github.com/FarCanary/ElectrumSeedTester
Since OP created his seed phrase with Electrum, then playing around with different derivation paths is a futile exercise. Standard Electrum seed phrases always restore to m for legacy accounts and m/0' for segwit accounts.If you are sure your seed phrase was generated in Electrum, then the only remaining possibility is that you have either made a mistake writing it down or you are making a mistake typing it back in. I would suggest using the software btcrecover to attempt to brute force where you mistake is - https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
So if you put Electrum seed into Ian Coleman site I expect you end up with different addresses.
You are right.... it shows error 'invalid mnemonic'.
But there is a fork of that project: https://github.com/FarCanary/ElectrumSeedTester
it correctly decodes Electrum seed. I tested with
Code:
shield correct dragon addict sand ripple race chat earth field library coin
which should give bc1q30qm50yn5xlcl50grzrmytf3su9wpnlj6rt8l4Jump to: