Changed HDD, New Windows Installation, Can't recover old wallet

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I recently installed Windows 8 on a separate HDD, copied over the BitCoin-qt directory, and the data directory. Including the wallet.dat.

But after running the -resync, my wallet shows up empty, and I have a new address.

Can someone please help me through transferring my wallet, I had 2 BTC in there.

*Note, I ran -resync in CMD and by appending it to the shortcut. I also have a relocated DataDIR

level42

Posted 2013-08-23T13:56:21.127

Reputation: 111

Using Bitcoin-qt 0.8.1level42 2013-08-23T13:59:27.607

Please be patient, I'm still kind of new to bitcoin.level42 2013-08-23T14:03:05.500

Answers

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There is no command line argument -resync, you might want -rescan instead.

However, if you're faced with a brand new wallet I don't think that's the problem. More likely the data directory that Bitcoin-qt looks for is in a different location than where you placed your old copy.

Does the shortcut you use include the -datadir argument to redirect to your desired location, and was wallet.dat copied to that location?

You should try searching your filesystem for wallet.dat, if you find the new created wallet you'll know where Bitcoin-qt looks for the data directory.

Meni Rosenfeld

Posted 2013-08-23T13:56:21.127

Reputation: 18 542

"H:\Software (x86)\BitCoin Wallet\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -rescan -datadir=H:\Software (x86)\BitCoin Wallet\Datalevel42 2013-08-23T14:42:10.213

Sorry, rescan was the command I was running, above is a copy of my shortcut. And the files were copied from my old c: drive on the other HDD into H:\Software (x86)\BitCoin Wallet\Datalevel42 2013-08-23T14:42:57.140

@level42: Since the name of your datadir contains spaces, don't you need to quote it?Nate Eldredge 2013-08-23T15:56:30.597

It seems to work without the quotes, I rebuild the data directory and it placed all the files in the correct location.level42 2013-08-23T16:36:12.203

you might want to view hidden files and folders and see if it created the bitcoin folder in (drive)\documents and settings(your user name)\application data\bitcoin. I have not used Windows 8 and recently ditched XP for Ubuntu due to the volume of programs that get told ' use this directory ' and still use the default one instead.nybbler905 2013-08-23T19:52:39.007

I've checked everything, I've updated the client to .8.3, I've logged into my old HDD (the wallet is fine there) updated the block chain, and exported the wallet. When I import the wallet.dat, I still show a balance of 0BTC with a different address.

I've copied over the entire data directory, including the block chain, and again, still shows a 0BTC balance. – level42 2013-08-24T17:57:16.167

1@level42: In Windows 7 this doesn't work without quotes, and I see no reason to believe in Windows 8 it would. Try to see if it's looking at "H:\Software" instead, and try changing the shortcut to read "H:\Software (x86)\BitCoin Wallet\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -rescan -datadir="H:\Software (x86)\BitCoin Wallet\Data"Meni Rosenfeld 2013-08-25T06:22:59.863

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I'm unfamiliar with running bitcoin-qt on Windows. However, on OS X the wallet.dat file is not located in the application directory (in fact, for any multi-user OS that'd be a pretty dumb place to put it, unless everyone is expected to share the same wallet). There should be an "Application Data" or similary directory in your H:\Users\ directory that will contain your wallet.dat file. Also, unless it's been deleted, you can use Windows search feature to search the drive for the file in question.

user9100

Posted 2013-08-23T13:56:21.127

Reputation: 11