<p>Sorry for your loss.</p>

<p>If he used early versions of Bitcoin, he may have made an unencrypted backup of his wallet.dat file somewhere. Cracking a password may be impossible, so this might be your next best option.</p>

<p>Wallet encryption is a feature that was implemented in <a href="http://bitcoin.org/releases/2011/09/23/v0.4.0.html" rel="nofollow">version 0.4.0</a> on 23rd Sep 2011, so if you do find a wallet.dat file older than that it's probably not encrypted.</p>

<p>Bitcoin users that are aware they are holding a substantial amount of bitcoins also are probably aware that they need to back their wallet.dat file up to a location different to their PC's hard disk in case of failure. You might find it on a DVD, thumb drive, or maybe somewhere like Google Drive.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-04T06:58:00.497Z
2013-04-04T18:02:52.753Z
2013-04-04T18:02:52.753Z
Highly Irregular
<p>There is a discussion about the subject, including a script for password cracking, at <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85495.0;all" rel="nofollow">https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85495.0;all</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-04-04T06:45:28.327Z
2013-04-04T06:45:28.327Z
Swampy
<p>My husband died recently.  He had a Bitcoin-Qt wallet with some bitcoins.  I don't know the password and the wallet is locked and encrypted.  Is there anyway to regain access to the wallet?</p>

<wallet><bitcoin-core>
How do I recover an encrypted bitcoin wallet to which I don't know the password?
Pamela
# How do I recover an encrypted bitcoin wallet to which I don't know the password?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-04-04)

My husband died recently. He had a Bitcoin-Qt wallet with some bitcoins. I don't know the password and the wallet is locked and encrypted. Is there anyway to regain access to the wallet?

**Tags:** wallet, bitcoin-core


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2013-04-04. Score: 3

Sorry for your loss.

If he used early versions of Bitcoin, he may have made an unencrypted backup of his wallet.dat file somewhere. Cracking a password may be impossible, so this might be your next best option.

Wallet encryption is a feature that was implemented in [version 0.4.0](http://bitcoin.org/releases/2011/09/23/v0.4.0.html) on 23rd Sep 2011, so if you do find a wallet.dat file older than that it's probably not encrypted.

Bitcoin users that are aware they are holding a substantial amount of bitcoins also are probably aware that they need to back their wallet.dat file up to a location different to their PC's hard disk in case of failure. You might find it on a DVD, thumb drive, or maybe somewhere like Google Drive.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2013-04-04. Score: 1

There is a discussion about the subject, including a script for password cracking, at <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85495.0;all>


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