Topic: Lost coins after problems with installing (Read 1870 times)

Honestly, if your computer is connected to the internet, there will always be a chance that it could get infected with malware that will empty your wallet.

If you are playing around with amounts of bitcoins that are likely to cause serious stress if you lose them, then you really need to look into an offline storage method.

If you are just holding the bitcoins for a long time and have no intention of sending them anywhere, then a paper wallet can be a very secure storage.  Unfortunately, paper wallets tend to be rather inconvenient if you intend to actually send the bitcoins anywhere with any frequency.

Another very secure storage would be something like Armory offline or Electrum offline.  Both these systems require you to have a second computer that is NEVER connected to the internet.  This offline computer is used to store your private keys and to sign transactions.  The signed transactions are then copied to the online computer with a USB device or QR Code.

If you are working with smaller amounts of bitcoins, something more like daily spending cash, then for the most part you'll be okay as long as you don't install any freeware or pirated software and you don't allow your browsers to install extensions/plugins that you don't absolutely need. If you've already installed freeware, or pirated software in the past, or if your browsers already have unknown extensions and plug-ins installed, then you might want to consider re-installing your operating system and keeping the computer clean. You can install malware scanners, but I generally don't trust any of them to be bitcoin aware and protect me from wallet stealing software.

Note that wallet stealing malware isn't just a risk for Bitcoin Core.  Any method you use to access your bitcoins is at risk if you end up with sophisticated enough malware on your computer.  Even many forms of 2 factor authorization are at risk since the malware can just wait for you to enter the second factor from the infected computer.

OK, back up done.  About the malware, what program do you recommend for mac? I recently encrypted my harddrive, does that help?
Thanks again

No.  You can back it up while it is synchronizing, and should do so as soon as possible.


You can shut down Bitcoin Core (previously known as Bitcoin QT) while it is synchronizing.  It will remember where it left off with the synchronization and when you start it back up again later, it will continue synchronization from where it left off.


If you have malware on your computer, then the bitcoins could already be stolen.  It is important to be certain that the computer you are using to access your bitcoins does not have any malware on it.


I'm sorry that you've had such a bad experience.  I'd suggest taking the time to learn a bit more about what you are doing before you put any more money into something that's going to cause you so much stress. Note that bitcoin is still an experimental technology.  It is extremely high risk.  You shouldn't put money into bitcoin that would be devastating to lose.  While there is a lot of potential that the exchange rate for bitcoin could be significantly higher than it is today, there is also a substantial rick that you could wake up tomorrow and discover that the exchange rate has dropped to less than $1, or that some new bug is discovered that makes bitcoin worthless.


Bitcoin Core pre-generates the next 100 addresses that it will use and keeps those hidden from you.  When you request a payment (or generate a bitcoin address), bitcoin gives you one of these pre-generated addresses, and then when it gets a chance it generates a new address to replace the one it gave you.  When you encrypt the wallet, it discards those hidden pre-generated addresses that you have not yet requested from the software and generates new ones.  If you want to put your mind at ease that your Bitcoin Core still has the address that you had the bitcoins sent to:

Choose "Receiving addresses..." under the drop down "File" menu.

You should see the address listed along with whatever label you gave it (if any).

As long as you see the address here, your wallet still knows about the address and will be aware of the transaction as soon as it catches up with synchronization.

But I should wait for it to sync up right?
All the stress came because I wanted to back up my wallet in the first place and keep it all safe before going to sleep. Now I have to wait days until I dare use my computer again. I used it yesterday for firefox and firefox is acting weird so I decided to let it sit until it's syncs up.
Thanks a lot. I can finally be normal again. I wasn't human these last days because the guy who sold me the coins didn't say anything reassuring at all, and I read some posts that said that addresses are lost with encryption, I don't really know what that means.
My girlfriend was starting to hate bitcoins. I was starting to hate myself. Ug, this article was about what was happening to me http://bitcoinomics.net/is-bitcoin-making-people-want-to-kill-themselves/

Anyway, thanks again.

You are most likely fine.  As long as you haven't deleted the wallet.dat file or lost/forgotten the password that you used to encrypt the QT wallet, the bitcoins should show up when it is done with synchronization.

You should make a backup of your QT wallet as soon as possible and store it in a safe place.



If your hard drive crashes and you don't have a good backup of the wallet, you will lose your bitcoins.

I have been playing around with different wallets and until now everything was easy. I wanted to back up my new bitcoins on a pendrive but wasn't able to with the wallet I was using (hive) so I downloaded QT. I tried to send my coins to my new Qt wallet and then encrypted my QT wallet before receiving the deposit and it wasn't yet synced either (and still isn't because it is taking for ever). Have I lost my bitcoins? I don't think I have ever been so stressed out in my life.

Man I was also having problem like you.I backed up Bitcoin file on my Google drive and when I install the app and sync it.My btc balance was 0 but after 1day it automatically came to my wallet.so my suggestion is that wait sometime or report to the site.

Yeah that worked, thatks a lot! cheers.

If you restored the wallet.dat after you synced bitcoin core sometimes does not realize there is a new file, so you need to start it with:

-rescan

if that does not help you might want to run with

-reindex

to rebuild the blockchain database (its not actually redownloading, but it might take some time depending on your CPU, similar to the time it took after you put the boostrap.dat in place)

In any case your btc are not lost, they are safely in the blockchain and the private keys needed to spend them are in the wallet.dat. If all should fail there are tools to recover the keys even if you cant get bitcoin core to work.

Hopefully not lost....

Try running bitcoin-qt with the -rescan option. E.g. if you're on windows, close the app, and then go to Start -> Run, and type:

So i downloaded bitcore qt and sent a fairly large sum of coins to the address before i noticed that bitcore had to sync. When it was three weeks behind it stopped syncing and had the same amount of blocks downloaded for a few hours, so i backed up the walllet, uninstalled and got the bootstrap.dat file. now that it's synced i put the backed up file in the %appdata% folder for the bitcore client and changed the name and deleted the old wallet.dat. But i do not have the bitcoins in my wallet. are the coins i sent to the address before uninstalling lost or somehow in the wallet.dat file i backed up?