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I downloaded Bitcoin-Qt, got it running, had 15 weeks or so left to catch up (sync) when I purchased some bitcoins and had them sent to my new wallet.

Then to my horror, Bitcoin-Qt has frozen with four weeks to go. It has been running 48 hours without any change in changed blocks left. I have restarted my computer, rebooted the modem, all the simple things but no love.

What can I do to access this wallet? I'm new to all this. I only ever used my online wallet address before.

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    What version of Bitcoin-QT are you running? One of the newer versions significantly increased the synchronization speed.
    – Murch ♦
    Nov 23, 2013 at 2:53

2 Answers 2

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If you still have the wallet.dat file from the bitcoin-qt installation at the time got the wallet address that you sent the money to you can use that with a new bitcoin-qt installation to try to make it work. If you don't have that wallet.dat file anymore the money is lost.

As for the problems downloading the blockchain, are you sure you have enough space? It's about 12 GB now. It sometimes take a very long time to download and may just look like it's sitting around for a while doing nothing, then pick up again a while later.

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    Yupp backed up wallet, before and after I encrypted it in my panic.... Was scared to uninstall and reinstall as I couldn't find anywhere to open a backed up wallet, as for space, I'd be really surprised to find I don't have 12 gig on my c drive, but will check that too when I get home, thanks heaps for help hey!!!
    – Ric
    Nov 22, 2013 at 14:58
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    P.s. I figured 48 hours was long enough for it sitting around doing nothing before I called it frozen
    – Ric
    Nov 22, 2013 at 14:59
  • @Ric you are probably right about 48 hours, though if you have space and waiting doesn't solve it I'm out of ideas. Hopefully someone else have some.
    – LJNielsenDk
    Nov 22, 2013 at 15:03
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If all else fails you can export your private keys and import them into a different wallet, like Electrum.

To get your private keys out of bitcoin-qt, click Help, Debug Window, Console tab.

If your wallet is encrypted, you must unlock the wallet with this command:

   walletpassphrase "your wallet password" 60

To get the private key: 

   dumpprivkey "addressYouOwn"
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