Quote from: Someone_2 on January 20, 2020, 05:50:34 PM

It seems I've run into a plethora of misinformation out there. Okay so here is the a link to the post that inferred the idea that I could get a copy of my wallet.dat file from the bitcoin blockchain itself. Scroll all the way down, it's posted by HCP. Post is June 24th 2017 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1976001.0 Wallet ID is mentioned, however there is nothing stating that it's a commercial website not affiliated with bitcoin itself. Again I had literally assumed that it was and that the wallet ID mechanism is thusly part of the bitcoin blockchain. I saw there are timestamps on there. I know when I mined it and how many transactions were going in and out of the wallet, so I had assumed I could narrow down what wallet was mine, along with the IP address assigned by the ISP and thus a rough geographical location. So in a sense, using metadata about the wallet. Look for a wallet matching those metadata criteria, download it, try recovering it.

Ahhhh I see where your confusion has come from... one of my posts to another user regarding attempting a password recovery on a blockchain.info web wallet.

That's not misinformation, it is just you're reading solutions to different problems/issues and thinking that they apply to you.

And yes, it can be confusing for newbies seeing "blockchain.info/.com" and thinking that it IS the blockchain, as opposed to a commercial company trying to look more important than they are... It is not an accident that this company deliberately chose this domain name. Angry

Quote from: Someone_2 on January 20, 2020, 05:50:34 PM

This page at https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/ce1862ac6bcffa1dd20aad858380e51e66e949ea#diff-f01f2760502eccb8cb2ede8981e31b82 gave me the idea that if I could remember enough of the passphrase/list of words that I could quasi bruteforce guessing what it is, as long as some of it is already known. It would be known as a salted word list lookup at that point, also a non bruteforce password attack. At this point I had assumed the list of characters that I know I saw but can't remember what they were, was the 12 word, fixed word private key or seed. Unbeknownst to me that it's not possible because the wallet version was too early. So then I wondered that it was a wallet ID.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that ALL wallets use wordlists? Some do (Electrum and Mycelium for instance) and some don't (Bitcoin Core). Given you believe that you were using Bitcoin-Qt/Bitcoin Core, then this method does not apply to your situation.

Also, given that the wordlist generates an effective "alphabet" of 2048 "characters" as there are 2048 words in the BIP39 wordlist... your odds of "quasi bruteforce guessing" it are orders of magnitude worse than attempting to bruteforce a "simple" 12 character password using uppercase/lowercase/numbers which is a 62 character "alphabet".

Quote from: Someone_2 on January 20, 2020, 05:50:34 PM

The UUID was in the directions to something but I'm not sure what, I suspect the directions to using btcrecovery.py. That, a wallet transaction number and some other things were required criteria to find and download the wallet.dat file, probably from blockchain.info. Again this one I don't have eividence of the misinformation.

No, the only thing needed to download a blockchain.info (now known as blockchain.com) wallet file (note: it is NOT actually a wallet.dat file, it's a text file in JSON format usually called "wallet.aes.json") is the wallet ID (and your "2FA" code if you had it enabled), as per the btcrecover docs:

Quote from: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md#running-btcrecover

Blockchain.info - it's usually named wallet.aes.json; if you don't have a backup of your wallet file, you can download one by running the download-blockchain-wallet.py tool in the extract-scripts directory if you know your wallet ID (and 2FA if enabled)

Again, given that you're adamant that you were using Bitcoin Core, this solution does not apply to your case.

Quote from: Someone_2 on January 20, 2020, 05:50:34 PM

This thread has no information at all on what versions of the wallet it applies to, so I thought and assumed it meant all of them. There is no indication otherwise https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4959742.0 BIP39 I had no idea what version of the wallet it applied to.

That is a generalised recover guide that applies to a lot of different wallet software/applications. It is NOT specific to Bitcoin-Qt/Bitcoin Core. It even suggest that here:

Quote from: LoyceV on August 26, 2018, 01:09:32 PM

...
Determine wallets based on filenames (note: these are the default filenames, you could have renamed yours)

wallet.dat
Use Bitcoin Core
Note: many altcoins use(d) the same filename, in that case you won't find any Bitcoins in your wallet.
default_wallet
Use Electrum.
bitcoin-wallet-backup-YYYY-MM-DD. Example: bitcoin-wallet-backup-2015-12-31
Use Bitcoin Wallet on Android.

...

So, that thread is more aimed at someone who has access to a wallet or private keys or some other form of "backup" (like a seed mnemonic)... and aren't quite sure exactly what "format" that backup is in and/or what wallet software/application they may need to use their backup with. Your situation is completely different, as you have nothing except possibly a broken hard drive. Undecided

Quote from: Someone_2 on January 20, 2020, 05:50:34 PM

Anyone have ideas how else i could retrieve the wallet? I know less about it than probably everyone on here.

The short answer is that if you don't have any backups of your original wallet.dat, or any way to recover the wallet.dat from your old drive, then your wallet is lost forever. There is no way to reconstruct it from any other information.

Quote from: Someone_2 on January 20, 2020, 05:50:34 PM

Wish I knew how to do quoting on here.

You click the "quote" button on the post you are trying to quote. Wink