Topic: Need help recover bc wallet ready to give from min 200$ to 20% depends on help (Read 479 times)

No, he didn't... he is adamant he still has funds somewhere... so his problem isn't "solved" as such.


There wasn't anything special done...

1. Download and fully sync Bitcoin Core
2. Shutdown Bitcoin Core
3. Swap "new" wallet.dat with "old" wallet.dat
4. Start Bitcoin Core with "rescan" option enabled
5. Wait

Bitcoin Core then rescanned all the block data looking for transactions relating to the "old" wallet.dat... it found 2 transactions, one in... one out... and a final balance of 0 BTC

There was no password hacking required, as the "old" wallet.dat had no password.

OP has been attempting to use data recovery software on the old drive with hopes to find another wallet.dat/wallet file... there is also a possibility they had funds in a completely different wallet, but OP cannot remember what it might have been... it could even have been a "brain wallet" or web-wallet in which case there is a chance that there never was a "local" wallet file to find/recover.

Well how many years had pass already and it is just natural that one may forget the pass of the wallet.dat file. As I have read the discussion with replies it seems that OP had solve the issue with the help of @HCP.

Anyway, that was a fun learning experience that one was able to manage opening the old wallet.

I was interested on how it was done with @HCP after it sync all the data of the old wallet to bitcoin core. To crack the password would likely difficult task to do however, i admire both of you made it to access the wallet.

Is there any way we can find it here how you do it? I was amaze by the process that has been done and hopefully there is a guide for us to know and follow. Who knows one I might be able to experience the same problem as OP does in the future.

I have been helping the OP walk through the process of checking the wallet.dat that he had recovered... unfortunately, it appears that either the OP used two wallets or his recollection of past events is incorrect.

After syncing Bitcoin Core and then opening the old wallet.dat, there were only 2 transactions showing (both from 2013), one incoming and then one outgoing (about 8 hrs later) that spent all the funds from the first transaction. The result being that the wallet.dat was completely empty and has been since 2013.

We tried exporting the private keys from the wallet.dat and importing them into Electrum in case there was some issue with the Bitcoin Core rescanning and/or the fact that the wallet was synced on top of old blockchain data... and Electrum showed only the same 2 transactions.

OP is adamant that he must have had leftover BTC somewhere and that there was a 2nd wallet.dat that randomly appeared during a search of the HDD for "wallet", but that his HDD "lagged" when he attempted to access it and that no sign of this wallet has been seen since.

OP has already tried to use Recuva on the HDD, but nothing resembling a wallet file was found.

I would note that the (empty) wallet.dat that the OP originally found, was found in a directory underneath a folder called "Windows.old", which itself was in a folder created by a backup app called "backup4all"... my suspicion is that any other wallets that were used, might have been lost during a Windows system upgrade or "restore"... and the data on disk was subsequently overwritten some time in the last 7 years.

So, any success?

You can do all by yourself, just follow the instructions posted here.  Everyone can see what people are suggesting and if someone will try to trick you, the reputable members will catach him. If everything is posted here you are safe. There were several cases like yours solved here so, no worries.

He is a scammer, as bob123 said.

Do not answer to any PM, ignore all users who send you any PM regarding this.

I recommend that all your discussions regarding this topic to be public here in this forum, for your safety. There are a lot of scammers who use this forum, and they will try to scam you via PM.

When you make public discussions a lot of users will give you different ideas and you will have a better chance of recovering your funds

You do not need to give your wallets to anyone.
If you want 'community' to find your passwords, you must extract their hashes from the file. Then you may publish these hashes here, with your hints and guesses.
If you want to find the password yourself, check this software: https://hashcat.net/hashcat/ As you know parts of passwords and you are just unsure about lower/uppercase letters etc, you may try to launch it yourself and you do not need a lot of computation power.
To extract password hash for hashcat, use John The Ripper script - what exactly you need is to launch script bitcoin2john.py (https://github.com/openwall/john/blob/bleeding-jumbo/run/bitcoin2john.py)
You will receive hash which looks like "$bitcoin$64$1234567abcd..." In fact it means "take your sentence and calculate hash, than calculate hash from the result hash, then do it xxx times - and if you receive final hash like yyyy, sentence/password/ is correct)
Then you may use this hash with hashcat - or publish here and wait for result.

And again - this is just an information about the password - as long as you keep your wallet file, you are safe.

Do not send your file to anyone.
Anyone contacting you via PM is a scammer.

If you want someone to recover the wallet for you, use Dave's recovery service. That's the only trusted recovery service out there. He takes 20% if he finishes to recover your coins.

sync complete i know 3-5 passwords i used but don't remember if it was big captions and maybe 123 or !"# but usually put @ instead of number 2.

got a pm wanted 10-20% but seems little much when i know the passwords just not big or small letters. i thank you all and if i ask someone to crack the password how do i do that without compromising the wallet.dat i mean they need that to test the passwords right.

and do you think I'm right if its like i say 5 different passwords that i know just have to test several big and small letters. i understand 10-20% if i lost the password completely but this is different how much would you give for 5 passwords but not sure about captions.

thx for all replies really nice forum here ppl are helpful. and Thx to people who warned me not using teamvier. i thought 20% that should be enough not to scam me but who knows there strange ppl. i could not scam a man that's offered 20% with teamvier help but because of advice here i scrapped that idea.

I’m now syncing the bt core says 25h till sync and total of 320GB I think

  Hi, i think I can help. Please contact me here [email protected].  Im not asking you to send me any file. I would just want 20% if we open it. I can give you directions to get your coin back.

You can also use pywallet to dump the private keys without using or syncing core.

You can find pywallet here: https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet

Good luck!
/KX

The fastest way to access your coins is number 2) mentioned by HCP.

Install core, copy your wallet.dat file into the data directory of core, start it up and export the private keys.
Then use any lightweight client (electrum is easy to use) and import them. You'll be able to send them to a new address without needing to download the whole blockchain.

However, before installing electrum, make sure to verify the signature. You don't want to lose all of your coins because you accidentally downloaded a fake version of electrum.

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You do realize that no one ever suggested to delete something?

It's a good thing you saved everything.
If you are unsure, keep all of it.
And don't listen to these 'professionals' who will tell you to start deleting things or to save less.
It blows my mind that they will stop at nothing and tell you that it's ok to start trashing and deleting things.
They should understand that they are dealing with someone who isn't sure about things and who is not an expert.
Extreme precaution has to be taken until the point where the coins are recovered.
Keep all of it until you have your coins back.

Today, to sync BitcoinCore (download the whole history) you will need around 300Gb and several hours (depending on internet connection and hard disk speed - on SSD it is much faster).
The easier solution is like they said - just open BitcoinCore app and load your wallet.dat. Check which addresses you have there and then go to Console and execute
dumpprivkey YourAddressWhereYouHaveBTC
it should produce 51-52 characters long text, WIF.
Then you may create a new wallet in other program (Electrum...) and import this WIF - and then your BTCs should be accessible for transfer.
But first at all - do the backup and keep your original file in a safe place.
Ah, and of course in fact it is not important which of your wallets you will use - you said that you did a few backups in 2012-2013. So the only difference will be only to see the list of transactions when you open the file in BitcoinCore - at the end the final state depends on address and you will see the final balance when you import it into Electrum.

EDIT: ahh, I type so slow ;-) in fact all that has been already said before.

A warning: you should ignore all "offers" you receive by PM (private message). You wouldn't be the first to get scammed that way.

In addition to this: you should make those copies on different USB-sticks, not just on the same drive.

HCP knows what he's talking about

If you let Bitcoin Core fully synchronize the blockchain, you'll need 320 GB of free disk space.

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Once you've recovered your Bitcoins, you'll also own several Forkcoins. Forget about them until your Bitcoins are safe, but don't throw away your wallet.dat before getting them out. I won't go into details here, but you're currently looking at just over $500 worth in Forkcoins for each (old) Bitcoin in your wallet.dat. I'm more than happy to help with this when you reach this phase.

Correct... the only part of the old data you really need is the wallet.dat file. This is the wallet data file that contains all the private keys you need to be able to access your bitcoins.


The 9.7gb's will be "blockchain data" that Bitcoin Core (likely called bitcoin-qt back when you created this) had downloaded. This blockchain data consists of the "raw" block files downloaded from other bitcoin nodes. It is not necessary to have kept this, as you can always just recover that from other bitcoin nodes... that's part of what nodes do, they share blockchain data

And yes, an 88kb wallet.dat is not that unusual for an "old" wallet.dat from the earlier Bitcoin Core wallets.


Because it would appear you have backed up the old Bitcoin Core data directory... and not the actual application directory...

On Windows, applications are generally installed to "C:\Program Files" (and/or "C:\Program Files (x86)")... this folder generally contains just the application itself (ie. the "exe" file)... and any support libraries etc. The "User Data" is generally stored in "AppData\Roaming\APPLICATIONNAME"... which for Bitcoin Core on Windows 10 will be "C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin"


In any case, as mentioned above... the ONLY thing you need from the old backup, is the wallet.dat... that is the file that will contain all your private keys... and these private keys are what you need to be able to create/send bitcoin transactions.

You probably can't use the wallet to transact because it's out of date and not synced. You need to have the entirety of the blockchain stored so you can transact with bitcoin core. Syncing the blockchain is a process that could take quite some time at first. Depending on your internet connection speed, CPU speed and storage drive speed also.

I would recommend you try and install an updated bitcoin core in a secure computer, import wallet.dat, and export the private keys. Then you could import the keys to a wallet that doesn't require sncing like Electrum.

Always make sure that your computer is secure and that you're visiting the official sites to download executables from. 

THX HCP

I read it twice to try understand all but still think I did not get it all like what private keys you mean? and from what you are saying I should go with the video and use only the wallet.dat file not the other 9,7gb files found in bitcoin map ?

and why do you think I cant start this wallet? cause I made a copy to the 1tb external HDD and what I remember it was an .exe file I saved but now I only find pieces or actually surprised at those 9,7 GB of data what is that about on first picture my wallet.dat is only 88kb big so whats using 9,7gb and is there a way of getting the real wallet somewhere saved on my HDD to click exe and it will open up with a password. i don't understand why the wallet exe is not found. actually will check what the name was of wallet I think I found it in a backup and like I said when clicked on it in backup4all/user/ desktop/wallets name I'm sure it said pathway does no longer exist. i made 3x copy of this wallet in 2012-2013 one on HDD one one a computer one on a USB. so will also continue to work on finding the whole wallet.

If it's "wallet.dat" and you found it with "gigs of data" in the AppData/Roaming/Bitcoin folder... then it is most likely the wallet file from "Bitcoin Core".

Firstly, make a couple of copies of "wallet.dat"... this is your "golden ticket", so you don't want to lose it.

But the video looks like it follows the steps that I would personally do... ie. Download, then install the latest version of Bitcoin Core... Run it once... once it starts "syncing", shut it down. Then replace the new wallet.dat in the C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin directory that it will have created with one of the copies of your old wallet.dat and restart it again.

It should "update" the wallet file to be compatible with the new version of Bitcoin Core, and you'll then be able to dump out the private keys etc. if you don't want to download and process 350+ gigs of blockchain data while syncing Bitcoin Core

NOTE: You will probably NOT be able to see your transactions/bitcoin until Bitcoin Core has synced up to the date that you originally received the coins into your wallet. So, don't be surprised if there is balance of 0.00000000 BTC when you first open it!

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Once you have the wallet loaded into Bitcoin Core, then your options are:

1. Let Bitcoin Core sync... could take hours/days... but is probably the "safest" way to recover your coins as you don't have to expose private keys etc.

or

2. Export your private keys from Bitcoin Core (using dumpwallet which dumps ALL the private keys from the wallet file, or dumpprivkey which outputs specific private keys for nominated addresses) and then import those private keys into a "light" or SPV wallet of your choice... ie. Electrum

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It's because you're a "newbie" account... you can't embed images until your account ranks up or you buy a copper membership


If you need any help, just ask.