Topic: Desperate Help Required (Read 2088 times)

I've copied the blockchain and associated files onto an SDcard. Hopefully this will save me have to download the whole blockchain if I have to re-build at some time in the future.

Guys my balance is restored.

A couple of days panicking, waiting for blocks to reindex are over. I'm just going to have some food & later I'm going to leave positive trust on 3 or 4 of you who have helped me & calmed me down etc.

Some of you in this thread are an absolute credit to the bitcoin community.

Thank you

This one is easy. Post an address that you wish to have the BTC sent to. This would be either an address of an exchange at which you have an account at, or an address of a wallet you have with a "light" client (eg electrum, multibit, or bc.i).

I will create an unsigned transaction that spends the single output that is unspent in the above address to the address you provide, will post such transaction, then you can use the "signrawtransaction" command in the console to sign the transaction, then you can either post or PM such signed transaction and I will push it to the network for you

Danny you're a star. One of the very best posters & people here.

It almost certainly will.

However, if it doesn't then there's still no need to panic.  The fact that your wallet still shows the proper receiving addresses is a VERY good sign.  If the wallet doesn't show the proper balance after the sync completes, it should still be possible to extract the private key from the wallet and regain control of the bitcoins from some other wallet.

Update - Still reindexing blocks. 1 year xx weeks to go. I anticipate this might take another 24 hours

I will update you guys when it's done. Praying my true balance shows.

One thing i have learned using bitcoin over these last 4 years is to keep calm,  it usually sorts itself out in the end, and there is always great help on this forum.  once your client has synced it will all be fine.  I would however have a think about keeping so much bitcoin in your computer if i was you i would have them 20 bitcoin all in seperate cold wallets.  this is entirely personal preference mind you, as you could just have all 20 in 1 cold wallet.  But i would def have them in cold storage.  i like to be able to see my private key.....

You're a pretty knowledgable guy.

If my balance goes back to what it should be after this I will leave you & a few others in this thread positive trust as a thank you.

It isn't downloading the whole blockchain again, it is putting everything it has already downloaded into databases so it can find where everything is. Shutting it down improperly screws up this database because it doesn't close properly. Part of it has to do with LevelDB being stupid about not closing properly.

I have a good number of bitcoin in cold storage.

Pretty much only have just over 20 in this address - https://blockchain.info/address/1ehxS6fvLjYEr12D7Kj4Us6HxYyXpixmX

That receiving address is showing on Core. I'm hoping that the balance of my wallet will correct itself once I've unfortunately had to download the entire blockchain again.

This is a farce having to do this again though just because core didn't shut down properly.

Yes, all of the Bitcoin stored in that wallet should be absolutely fine and you will see the balance once it is restored. However, because you have restored it from a backup, you may not have all of the addresses that you used in the past. If you used less than 100 addresses since you backed up your wallet, then you should be fine. If you did though, then you should restore the original wallet that you backed up when you restored this backup. Otherwise you will be losing Bitcoin. Currently, if you request another address, you should get the same one you had previously.

Ok this is a good sign right?

I just clicked receiving addresses (balance is still 0)

But the 1 receiving address I give a shit about is stored -



So when it's all synced balances should be restored to what they were?

I hope

The address I'm anxious not to lose - https://blockchain.info/address/1ehxS6fvLjYEr12D7Kj4Us6HxYyXpixmX

Ok Danny - Coming from you that's good advice, I think I need to wait until it's fully synced before I make my next move.

Thank you.

Step 1.

Do not panic!

If you panic you are likely to take actions without taking the time to think about what you are doing and could end up making mistakes that make things worse and which you cannot recover from. As long as you have a reasonably recent good backup of your wallet, you should be able to recover full access to your bitcoins.

Step 2.
If you have the time, just wait for the sync to complete.  The wallet determines how much bitcoins you have based on the transactions it finds during the sync.  Since the sync started over from the beginning it can only show the bitcoins that you had back in 2009.  If you didn't have any bitcoins in 2009, then it will show a balance of 0.  As it synchronizes it will eventually catch up to more recent blocks that have the transactions that gave your wallet your current balance. It will then update the display to show you those bitcoins.

Step 3.
If the sync has completed, or if it keeps restarting from the beginning, or if it crashes and never completes, or if it hangs and makes no progress synchronizing for an extended period of time, then you'll need to consider one of the following:

• Figuring out what is wrong with the software on your computer and fixing it
• Loading Bitcoin Core onto a different computer and importing your wallet there
• Extracting the private keys from your wallet.dat and importing them into some other wallet software

Be VERY careful about any advice you get.  There are a lot of people on this forum that don't know what they're talking about at all. They'll either just repeat something they think they heard previously or they'll just make up some advice.  If you aren't absolutely certain that you understand the implications of what you are being told to do, then you should either wait to get confirmation from a trusted source, learn more about what is being suggested, or find someone that you trust that has the knowledge and experience to assist you.  Do NOT give your wallet.dat or private keys to ANYBODY.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing you can possibly do at the moment is make absolutely certain that you have good safe backups of wallet.dat.  If you have multiple copies, from different time periods, then make sure you know which one is from when and that you don't get them mixed up or accidentally overwrite ANY of them.

This is the main address I'm concerned about

https://blockchain.info/address/1ehxS6fvLjYEr12D7Kj4Us6HxYyXpixmX

That is backed up on my only wallet.dat back up file on my computer.

After doing what you said EcuaMobi it is not showing on Bitcoin Core now.

I did replace the other wallet.dat file when prompted

There is nothing wrong. What happened was that you closed Bitcoin Core without allow it to go through its closing procedures. This corrupted the database the keeps track of the blockchain. This will always happen with an unclean shutdown. All of the blocks that you downloaded are still on the disk, all of your Bitcoin is still safe. All it is doing is indexing the blocks back into its database which will take a long time depending on your CPU and hard drive. You don't have to do anything, just let it do its thing and don't close the program. Once it is finished, the bar will go away and it will be fully synced and tt should should show your balance properly, if it doesn't then you have a problem.

Check your receiving addresses. Did you recover the ones you had? If you did then yes, your balance will be back as it was once it's synced. Or manually check every address' balance on a web block explorer.

Done this.

The balance is still 0.

Will it show back as what it was when it's synced?

Did you check whether the previously downloaded data have actually occupied space in your hard drive or not? If it's still there then just try and stop the entire download and start it again and see whether it recognizes the old files. If the previous data's not there or has been erased you just gotta download the entire blockchain again.

P.S. I am not saying that you should but if you need the sync as soon as possible you can buy one of those already downloaded blockchain on data stick things that are up to date and synchronized upto current transactions.  
I sincerely hope that you get your data back. Also keep multiple backup of your .dat file in case of redundancies.
Best of luck

• Close bitcoin core
• Hit Windows+R
• Write "%appdata%\bitcoin" (without the quotes of course) and hit Enter. That will open the directory you need.
• Backup the current file wallet.dat (just in case)
• Paste your backed up wallet.dat file (make sure it's named wallet.dat)
• Open bitcoin core again and let it sync