Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: Unable to open corrupted wallet dat file
by
nc50lc
on 01/03/2023, 13:46:44 UTC
Is there any way to recover it, repair it.
Try to run -salvage on a copy of that wallet using Bitcoin Core's bitcoin-wallet tool.
The result is depending on the deleted parts, if the (encrypted) master key is intact, it should be able to restore it to a usable state.

Follow this post to use the command:
Try Bitcoin Core's bitcoin-wallet tool's "salvage".
"bitcoin-wallet" is in the "bin" folder inside Bitcoin Core's installation directory (where bitcoind and bitcoin-cli are located).

To use it, open Terminal, cd to the directory where bitcoin-wallet is.
Then use the command (provide the full path to the wallet.dat file):
Code:
bitcoin-wallet --wallet="E:\Folder\wallet.dat" salvage

It wont return with any response (unless it failed) but you will see a backup file (wallet.dat.xxxxx.bak) where the wallet.dat is located.
The new wallet.dat is the "salvaged" wallet.
If yo don't know how to "cd" (change directory), simply type cd "path_to_the_directory" in your Command Prompt window, in this case bitcoin core's bin folder.
e.g. (Windows default): cd C:\Program Files\Bitcoin\bin