I cant stress this enough. Before doing anything always always always create backup of wallet.dat (this is your actual wallet)
IN GENERAL FOR ALL CRYPTO CURRENCIES PLEASE use ONLY wallets from original posts, or the coin’s website itself. Avoid “updates” in forum threads, as they could potentially contain malware.
- Download .zip file of desired blockchain
- Copy .zip file to the coin’s folder, located in /Users/USER/AppData/Roaming (Windows) or ~/Library/Application Support (OS X)
- Create backup of wallet.dat (this is your actual wallet)
- Delete all files & folders, except for wallet.dat. If this is a new & empty wallet, remove wallet.dat also
- Unzip the .zip file directly into the folder (if using WinRAR, choose extract here)
- Launch wallet application
- If original wallet was moved, quit wallet application, copy wallet.dat to data folder, and launch wallet
- Always make backups of your wallet.dat files, especially if they contain coins
- Encrypt your wallets with a strong passphrase, and do not lose that passphrase!
USING BOOTSTRAPS
1 - Remove everything from the folder, except wallet.dat (also create a backup)
2 - Extract bootstrap.dat to the data folder (all bootstraps are named bootstrap.dat, so be sure you’re using the correct one)
3 - Launch the wallet, and wait for it to import the blocks (will take some time)
4 - Do not attempt to access the wallet, or click the splash screen, as some wallets will crash
5 - To monitor the progress, look in the coins’ data folder, and watch the blk0001.dat (or similar) increase in size. When it approaches the file size of the bootstrap.dat, you’ll know it’s almost complete
To create your own bootstrap.dat, from your own data files the easiest way is to use the command prompt in Windows:
1 - Open a command prompt (search for cmd in Windows)
2- type cd and space, and drag in the correct folder (i.e. /Users/
3 - Type this: copy /b blk0001.dat+blkindex.dat bootstrap.dat
4 - If there are more block files, then: copy /b blk0001.dat+blk0002.dat+blk0003.dat+blkindex.dat for example.
5 - Delete everything in the coin’s folder, except for bootstrap.dat and wallet.dat.
6 - See the procedure above, for loading a bootstrap.dat file.