Did I lose my account?

[fireMarshall88]

OS: Windows 7
Wallet type: Ethereum Wallet
Version: 0.11.1

Hi all,

The situation: I didn't use my wallet for a couple of months. Yesterday I've launched it and it asked for a manual geth update. Being a complete noob, I decided to download the latest version of wallet and just rewrite it over current folder. That didn't help, then I downloaded geth here: https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/ and installed it. After this wallet opened but with no account details.

Now I don't know how to get back to my account, I only know password and its external address.
I've checked AppData\Roaming\Ethereum\keystore for possible data restore, but this folder is empty.

At this point, are there any ways to get my account back or it is gone forever?

Any help or advice much appreciated!

[cryptojunky]

Did you back up your keystore prior?

[fireMarshall88]

Did you back up your keystore prior?

Not sure, but I guess if keystore folder is empty there is no way back anyway, right?

[cryptojunky]

Normally you would backup the keystore through the wallet backup option and save to an external source such as a thumbdrive, or an external hard drive.

From what I remember reinstalling the wallet does not modify or delete your keystore file in the app data folder. Did you happen to delete it manually before installing the wallet again or when reinstalling geth?

I will double check you are in the correct directory on my pc when I get home just to make sure. For now check your recycle bin / trash to see if it's there by chance.

[fireMarshall88]

Thank you for the suggestions. I didn't touch any folders before reinstall nor manually deleted it.

I've tried recovery tools like Recuva, but nothing was found at keystore folder.

I'm curious is it possible to be logged in onto your account, but without any keys in the folder? Because if it's not, they were definitely there as I even saw my balance when geth update window popped up in the first place.

[cryptojunky]

If you start ethereum does the wallet sync and show a new wallet address with a zero balace?

And just for the hell of it check your quarantine on your anti virus. I seriously doubt it's there but why not check it.

[fireMarshall88]

No wallet address, there is an option to create a new one. I've checked the quarantine, nothing there.

Well I already accepted the fact that I lost this acc. There was not so much ETH, since it was my second wallet.

I learned a valuable lesson, not to use this type of things unless I fully understand it. I think I won't come back to the ETH wallet ever again, for the noobs like me it's better to pay a fee and let 3rd party handle private key storage.

@cryptojunky thanks for the help!

[philsmd]

the only valid advice would be:

stop using your disk NOW. make a 1:1 backup of the whole disk (hard disk are very cheap nowadays, it's probably worth it). use something like testdisk/photorec (https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download , this is not an advertisement, it's open source software and very well known) on your read-only disk to search for the deleted files etc. Photorec is for instance already able to identify json files out-of-the-box see https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_Formats_Recovered_By_PhotoRec

Without the keystore UTC--* json file you won't get your ether back (except if you have a backup of the json file or the raw private key/seed). You need to make sure that you DO NOT use the disk; otherwise you risk overwriting everything. The problem is not that the file was deleted (i.e. just unlisted/"removed" from your file system), but a problem could be if you continue using the disk and indirectly override the bytes that hopefully are still present on the file system.

If these terms (file system, formatting, overriding/unlink etc) are all unknown to you, you should probably ask a very trusted friend for help and/or consult a trusted/well-known data recovery service for advice.
Good luck

update: found some user having success with testdisk on stackoverflow: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/24694/lost-private-key-keystore-file/24709#24709 ,
the idea here is actually very good... if you know the public ethereum address, you might be even able to filter your results with that specific string/address . I didn't think about that when first writing that reply here, but it's actually very easy to just "grep"/filter your results to get rid of other json results etc.