Topic: **REWARD** Help me restore my wallet!! (Read 581 times)

That's not entirely true... What happens is that Electrum simply blanks out the clipboard when you click "next" to goto the seed entry screen, so if you try copy/paste, you'll end up "pasting" an empty string into the box...

Unfortunately, what happens is that if you click "back", Electrum will actually generate a completely new random seed... invalidating the previous one. (Sidenote: I have a suspicion that this may explain how some people end up with multiple seeds written down or copying down the wrong seed etc.)

Anyway, what you can do to copy/paste, is that you can first copy/paste the seed to an external application (like notepad etc) and then click next... the clipboard gets wiped but you can simply go back to the external app and copy the seed from there and then paste it back into Electrum


Electrum requires you to re-enter the seed to confirm it... so you can't just next/next/next/accept etc... you would have had to have copied the seed and then either typed it back it manually or used the hacky copy/paste method I described above

Lot's of users in the past have copy/pasted into .txt documents, or taken screenshots... and ended up losing funds as a result of this... but, poor security practices aside, TheBeardedBaby was simply suggesting that you might want to look through any recovered .txt and image files to see if maybe you had done something similar. It's not guaranteed, but it's worth a shot.

Yep, it could been saved somewhere else. The thing is that I couldnt find nothing like wallet, **wal**, **let** or something like that

I'll scalpel whole HDD and let you know the results guys.

Thanks a lot

If you don't know exactly the drive that has the seed phrase or even have little doubt about it, I recommend try whole HDD for scalpel. It's maybe time consuming but helps to know that the file is corrupted or not.  

Edit:
After using scalpel, most probably, it'll return many mixed format files(bin+text) and you can read them with a text viewer e.g. Notepad but if you know those seeds that you have control of them now, you can save time also.
P.S. Did you give a password to the wallet?

Edit2: Phrases have been corrected.

Maybe you saved your wallet not in default folder, maybe under Documents/ or something like this. Do you remember if you applied a password on your wallet?

Hey man, thanks again for replying

Yep, I did install again electrum, and what happens is that it suggest you a default (I suppose randomly generated) seed phrase

That why I said I likely did Next/Next/Accept?Yes to all shit xD

Will try your new suggestion as well, and this scalpel stuff. (requires time copying stuff)

Thanks again!

PS: What pisses me off is that I have Electrum folder with stuff inside, but not wallet folder. Why? Because that specified memory were deleted in the format but not adjacent files/folders?  Did I move this folder somewhere else? Dont think so. The electrum version I was using did work the same way like the current one? No clue. Anyway, we keep going!

You cannot copy/paste the seed, you literally have to type it in but probably you didn't save the file.
Go make a new installation of electrum, if you haven't done it already, and see if it will ring any bell

Another idea, copy all your recovered files in one folder and use some of these tools to find a specific phrase.  
You can search for "addresses" for example and see what results you gonna get.

https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/search-inside-multiple-text-files-at-once/

Hi guys, thanks again for helping me out

I thought that the seed phrase could be stored in the HDD somewhere as well

Almost sure that if the version of electrum I used required the seed phrase, I did something like Next/Next/Next/Accept  (yeh, I didnt care much back then)

Surely I didnt write it down or took a screenshot or summin.

Unafortunately I wasnt able to restore any wallet file/folder...

I'll try to run scalpel and I let you know the result guys.

Thanks a lot

In the process of creating a new wallet, there is a very important step. When you decide what type of wallet you want to create, the next step is to backup your seed. This step is required by Electrum to be able to proceed further with the creation of the wallet.

You need to note somewhere the 12 words seed displayed below in the correct order and then repeat them to confirm that you have backed them up.



That's why I told you that you may be saved the seed in a text file or took a picture. This, of course, is a bad securty practice.

Did you find the wallet file OP? If not try the following:

1- Download and execute “HDD raw copy tool” for copying your entire HDD to a raw image file to your another HDD.
2- Download scalpel2 for Windows.
3- Set the config file for scalpel as following(you should change the scalpel.conf for this purpose):
NONE     y       400       "seed": "
4- Run scalpel the_image_file_path -o output_file_path

If you didn’t encrypt the seed by password and didn’t corrupt, you can most probably find the seed.

 Hi try searching for wallet.dat and passwords in .txt or things like .jpg file inside of them. Some may have 12 word phrase. Hope it helps and i could get reward. When you use the restore it program you should for all types of data.
 Thanks

Do you mean the files from Electrum\wallets? Because if you do:
Copy all of these on your main computer where they can be opened and read. This is how a wallet file will look like on a notepad:



The seed phrase will be on the bottom. Although, these files don't have an extension. From what folder did you find those?

Hi guys! Thanks again for all the help

I just realized I've got PLENTY of *.dat and *.txt files!

Any suggestion of what filenames I should look for? (Instead of _wal or something like that wich I've already tried)
Also, the seed phrase could be a picture as someone has suggested?

Wich filename should have? It should be stored as well inside Electrum folder?

Feeling like there is something I could do!

Thanks guys!

That's a good point, I actually never created unencrypted wallet, and it should be a common sense te encrypt and protect your funds with a password.
So my previouse suggestion is not an option here if the encryption of the wallet was introduced in 2017 no point to search for it.

NOTE: Only fully encrypted wallet files start like this... wallet file with no password and wallet files that are "password-protected" but do not use the "Encrypt Wallet File" option just look like standard, plaintext JSON files.

A "password protected" wallet file is created if this box is not checked during the setting of the wallet file password:



Also, wallet encryption was only added in version 2.8.0 - March 2017


NOTE: The password-protected, but not fully encrypted files, still have the private keys and seeds etc stored as encrypted text withiin the plaintext wallet file.

Let me give you another idea. Maybe you will find some unknown files with no name or some gibberish for name which can also be a wallet files.
What you need to do is to sort out all the files and open each on of them to check their source code.
It's simple, you drag the file directly in Notepad and if the source of the file begins with those charachters >

then you might be lucky. All the Electrum wallet files start with QklFMQN (I tested this on a differnt wallet files).
This will be your only clue to find out if you still have the wallet file or not.

Check all the .txt files and pictures for the seed. It's a 12 word seed.

Good luck in recovering those coins.

Electrum stores wallet files in a folder called "wallets" that should be in the same location as the "blockchain_headers", "config" and "recent_servers" files and the "certs" folder as shown in your screenshot here:



If your recovery software does not show the "wallets" folder, then you're likely out of luck

Does your recovery software only allow searching for file names etc? Or does it show a full list of all recoverable files/folders on the drive?

Hi, I already tried that, but didnt get any good results. What software do you recommend to search for this? I have used EaseUS and Wondershre Recoverit

Thanks again!

You're looking for the wrong file names. Try this:

Not what we are looking for...

Hi guys, here are some scheenshots of what I´ve been able to retrieve. These repeated Electrum folders are the same

https://i.postimg.cc/HssL9p9W/unnamed-1.png
https://i.postimg.cc/FR4rdmK4/unnamed-2.png
https://i.postimg.cc/W1gxDZqd/unnamed.png


It is possible to do something with this? REWARD pending! xD

Thanks guys