Topic: What to do if you've lost your Bitcoin Wallet Key Passphrase (Read 8770 times)

Agreed, it is obvious.  It essentially shifts the risk from not forgetting the password to making sure no one steals the plaintext wallet.  I was just stating the obvious, as you say, in case the OP didn't know about this feature in Armory since bitcoin qt doesn't have the ability to make a paper backup of your wallet.

"If you keep a plain text copy of your wallet, you can recover your bitcoins even if you forget your pass phrase!"
   -- Captain Obvious

If you forget your wallet passphrase, have a look at walletrecoveryservices.com
This service is designed to help you recover your wallet passphrase and hence your inaccessible bitcoins
Cheers
Dave

This problem has already essentially been solved by Armory, as long as you make a paper backup, you can recover your bitcoins even if you forget your pass phrase.

If you've lost your key, don't throw away you wallet. I read more than once here on the forum that somebody did so and years later desperately searched for it. Put it into your regular backup and forget about it after writing down all you know about it. Most likely you picked a weak password anyway but you have an edge over attackers by having the wallet and knowing something, be it the way you generated it, the length, the vocabulary, so when the day comes that the value in that wallet would be worth to brute force it, pay somebody to brute force it. There will come the day when the wallet password security is a joke compared to the by then feasible brute-forcing of actual private keys. The day when bitcoin long has migrated to a new algo

If handwriting, watch out for "5" looking like "S" and other similar issues.

I am at the same problem  

"Comments:  Totally annoyed that I simply can't KNOW my own private address for my wallet.  Why the hell is this hidden from me as the wallet owner?   Ridiculous.  Secondly, QT needs to allow people to see the characters as they are typing.  Obviously.  I can't imagine how many people will type this super important passphrase wrong, and they wont even know it until it comes time to SEND the BTC somewhere.  Again, ridiculous.  Lastly, QT should support printing of paper wallets so people can get their BTC out of the "electronic" realm altogether and not have to hope and pray that something doesn't corrupt the file, or even the passphrase.  I still believe there is no way in hell I manually typed that passphrase and got the "K" in there as a "k".  I'd sooner believe there's a bug in the encrypter or a virus or something.  And the number of people reporting incorrect passphprases when they are 100000% certain its not wrong, is large if you do a google search.  "

+1

I just skimmed your post, but commenting on your last couple paragraphs point by point:



When I'm setting important passwords, I make a point of typing it into a text editor and then when I set the PW in whatever app/account I'm setting up, type it from memory once, then copy/paste from the text-editor for confirmation field.



That'd be nice. Keep in mind, though, that the QT client is a technology reference client. It is not intended to be a user-experience oriented feature-rich bells-and-whistles piece of software.

There are other clients that do you what you want very well. This is still very early in bitcoin; only just recently are decently backed companies materializing that have the resources to really focus on user-experience and polish. The tools and marketing will get better with time.



Or a bug in your keyboard. But this "100000% certain" thing is a general problem with humans and passwords. This is bitcoin-independent.



There are well understood best-practices for not screwing this stuff up at this point. To rephrase your point more accurately; there aren't yet great user-friendly solutions that don't have counterparty risk (though blockchain.info is probably a pretty good optimum for most users). The tools to do this well are still pretty "techy". That gets better with time.

I just spent the last 4 hours searching Google and trying to find help in recovering my encrypted wallet passphrase.  When I went into Bitcoin QT and tried to send BTC, it told me that the passphrase I had written down and stored in multiple locations, was simply wrong.  This seemed impossible.  I not only had 4 electronic copies of it, but I had printed 2 copies on paper, and I know for a fact I didn't manually type it into QT.Especially when it doesnt allow me to see the letters I am typing.  My passphrase was also something like j2j#2@#;@#;338#&*.   Only an idiot would manually type that.  So I had copied and pasted it into QT from the source text file itself.  Yet it was wrong?   Yep.   Here are some things you can try if you run into this as well:

1)  Do first, what I did last.  It may save you a few hours of wasted stress:  One by one, try the alternative of the character.  So if you think your passcode is:
JkW#H*
Try this:  jkW#H*
Then this:  JKW#H*
Then this:  Jkw#H*
Then this:  JkW3H*
And so forth.  This is how I finally figured out what my passphrase was supposed to be.  I had somehow put a lower case k when it should have been capitalized.  To this day I have no idea how this happened, as there is no way I manually typed this passphrase into QT.  Especially when I can't see what I am typing as I type.  I guess it will remain a mystery....  Or QT has a bug

2)  If you copy paste in your passcode, consider that you may have pasted in a leading carriage return.  To test this, type your assumed passphrase into a text file.  Make sure there's a blank line above it.  Click and drag from that line to the end of your passcode on the next line, like this (the "|" is just to show you where you first click and drag from):

|
JkW#H*
When you past that into QT, you will see an extra "dot" show up for that leading carriage return.

3)  Do the same with a possible ending "return".  Blank line below the passphrase.  Click the first letter of the passphrase and drag it to the line below it:

JkW#H*
|

4)  If you are a copy paster, try pasting in the receiving address in your wallet for the last deposit.  Its possible you had copied that into another tool to receive coins, and never actually copied your passphrase to the clipboard, so you pasted the receiving address into QT instead.

5)  Lastly, try it with a space at the end of your assumed passphrase.   Just add a space and copy the passphrase with the space included.  On both the front and the end, maybe even both.

5)  If you aren't a copy paster, and you simply forgot what it is because you didnt write it down (shame on you), or something else is wrong, this is a very valuable thread with some code you can run to try and get it back:  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/encrypted-walletdat-lost-password-any-solutions-85495

If anyone else has any tips on how to recover a lost passphrase feel free to chime in here.   I think this process forced me to get creative in my thinking so I wanted to document the things I tried, as it may help someone else one day. 

One last tip - from now on im no longer using #@#$23e@@IKKJ#@LKJ@# passphrases.  It will be something in my head, that I'm actually able to remember.

Hope this helps someone.

Comments:  Totally annoyed that I simply can't KNOW my own private address for my wallet.  Why the hell is this hidden from me as the wallet owner?   Ridiculous.  Secondly, QT needs to allow people to see the characters as they are typing.  Obviously.  I can't imagine how many people will type this super important passphrase wrong, and they wont even know it until it comes time to SEND the BTC somewhere.  Again, ridiculous.  Lastly, QT should support printing of paper wallets so people can get their BTC out of the "electronic" realm altogether and not have to hope and pray that something doesn't corrupt the file, or even the passphrase.  I still believe there is no way in hell I manually typed that passphrase and got the "K" in there as a "k".  I'd sooner believe there's a bug in the encrypter or a virus or something.  And the number of people reporting incorrect passphprases when they are 100000% certain its not wrong, is large if you do a google search. 

Bottom line:   This aspect of BTC needs to be *CHANGED* or improved for end users if BTC ever hopes to become a worldwide currency.  Its nonsense, and nobody is going to adopt something that has such a high risk of losing tens of thousands of dollars.  I very easily could have lost $2,600 today because of a lower case "k"..  That isn't acceptable for any currency. 

Love,

Grumpy