What happens when you follow the above steps, but instead of select "Create new wallet" you select "Restore a wallet or import keys" and then enter your seed on the following page?

How many transactions, approximately does your wallet have? Is it a very large amount, or would you rather say it is a more casual amount?

Do you receive any regular payments to any addresses associated with your electrum wallet?

If you are comfortable, you can either post or PM me your xpub key (which can be found by clicking on Wallet --> Master public keys --> coping the key that is displayed). The xpub key will allow anyone who has access to the xpub key to see any transaction associated with your wallet in the past and in the future. However the xpub key does not allow the person in possession of the xpub key to access any of the private keys.

To create a new electrum wallet: file --> new/restore --> name you wallet (or use the default, wallet_1) --> okay --> Create new wallet/standard wallet --> okay --> copy/backup your seed --> next --> enter your seed to confirm that you backed it up properly --> next --> create a password if desired --> next --> you should now have a new wallet with no transactions.

I assume that the other programs (chrome, ect.) can connect to the internet without any issues.

---

If the above works, you can also repeat the above process, and enter your seed to recover your wallet using the above process.

Were you able to create a new electrum wallet that you could sync?

I am also assuming that the computer you are running electrum on is able to have other programs connect to the Internet.

My electrum has been stuck as "synchronizing" several times, especially recently and most frequently I have been able to clear the issue by simply closing electrum and then opening it back up a few minutes later. The issue started around the time the most recent "stress tests" we're starting so I suspect this was related.

I would suggest that you try restarting electrum, as well as restarting your computer, your router (if possible) and your internet modum (if possible). If none of these work then I would suggest that you create a new electrum wallet to see if electrum will sync with the fresh wallet (electrum will need to connect to electrum servers even if there are no transactions in order to check for transactions on your addresses).

I cannot say with certainty what happened, as I have never experienced this issue myself, however I suspect that this has to do with some kind of malleability issue.

I would suggest that you wait until your wallet finishes syncing before you try to spend any of your bitcoin. It is possible that the electrum server you are connected to is running slow, (or has other issues), so you can change the server you connect to both by restarting electrum and by going to tools --> network, then deselecting auto-connect and selecting another server to connect to.

Once you have finished syncing, I would recommend that you not send any transactions until you have no 0/unconfirmed transactions associated with your wallet, or if you are using coin control, to not send any transactions that are 0/unconfirmed from the address(es) you are "sending from"

Just to be sure download a code editor like Sublime text and use that to open the file. Do you have an encrypted seed?

According to the screenshot you posted the default_wallet file is over 100KB in size. So how can it be empty?

The wallet file is not empty and you still have the blockchain_headers and config files. Delete blockchain_headers and config files and run electrum. If it still doesn't start up then open up the default_wallet file in notepad and see if you can see the seed that dabura667 was talking about before. Notepad is a text editor while wordpad is a word processor. I think you'll have better luck with notepad.

No I don't have a backup, I'll try a system restore. Thanks

If you don't have another wallet file in that folder then the only option is to look at backups. Do you have backups? Another thing you can try is Windows system restore to restore to an earlier time.

I've created a version of 1.9.8 for you that includes a debug window. Please make a screenshot of any potential error messages you find there.

Download Electrum 1.9.8-dev and the signature.

Now before you open it please go to the official Electrum site verify https is enabled and the domain is correct. Then look for my pgp key (Maran Hidskes) there and verify the signature. Here is a step-by-step guide for doing that on windows.

Only after completing these steps run the app and give me the information it gives you.

1. Copy the default_wallet file to a safe place while you do this, just in case you mess something up.

2. Open default_wallet with Wordpad. (Not Notepad)

3. Search for the word "seed" and tell me if you see something like this:


If you see this, then your bitcoins are safe. This is your seed encrypted using AES with your password.


Tell me if you found this. I can help you recover your bitcoins if you have this.

How about telling us what you've tried so we don't waste time repeating ourselves? It's very hard to mess up finding a folder and deleting one file in it.

Do you have a second machine?  Copy the wallet.dat file to that machine and try opening it.