Is your Bitcoin wallet closing without any warning or notification? Well, you are not alone. Issues like this are common and in most cases the problem occurs when you force shutdown the wallet. If that is the case then probably you might have messed up your blockchain file. You’ll need to delete the blk.dat files from blocks folder and start syncing from scratch.
Occasional blockchain blockups are common with any cryptocurrency core wallets so try not to force shutdown your wallet. Okay, but what if you’ve closed your wallet gracefully and still can’t get your wallet running.
Do not worry. Here in this quick guide we’ll see what to do if your Bitcoin wallet keeps crashing. Also do not worry about your missing Bitcoins which will not show up until your wallet is fixed and fully synchronized. If you just want to make sure then you can always verify them in block explorer.
Check your computer’s date and time
Recently one of our users came up with a similar issue. They mentioned that their wallet keeps crashing and had no idea what causes the issue. All they reported was that their bitcoin-qt client opens up, starts syncing and then suddenly closes.
Usually when your wallet crashes you’ll get a message upon closure that says: “check your debug.log”. In their case they didn’t happen to receive any such message.
First thing we informed is to take a wallet backup and check the debug.log file for any errors.
Here is the error report:
2020-05-22T19:31:50 Warning: Please check that your computer’s date and time are correct! If your clock is wrong, Bitcoin Core will not work properly.
Well, you guessed it. The issue was their computer’s date and time. Setting the correct date and time fixed their wallet.
Alright! Now let’s see how to fix your wallet.
Bitcoin core wallet keeps crashing (Fix)
We are assuming your that your wallet is closed completely and is not running in the background. Also make sure to backup your wallet.dat file before you proceed to make any changes.
Once you’ve copied your wallet.dat file; open the debug.log file which you’ll find in the same directory. Scroll down the debug.log to recent logs and check the error message.
Is it related to corrupt blockchain? Then try re-indexing your wallet which will start rebuilding the blockchain. Here is how wallet reindex, rescan works.
If that didn’t fix, then delete all the files from Bitcoin directory except wallet.dat (Always have a backup of this file) and start fresh.
To sync up faster try using Bootstrap: All about Bitcoin bootstrap.dat
Still not working? Probably you have a faulty hardware. Could be the hard drive.
Backup your wallet.dat file and then uninstall your core wallet. Now try reinstalling on another drive that has more room. In case if you do not have enough space then you can try running Bitcoin core in pruning mode.
If hardware is the issue then you don’t want to keep funds on that PC even if you’ve fixed the wallet.
Here is how to:
Move wallet from one PC to another
Move wallet blockchain files to another directory
Faulty hardware are more prone to put your funds at risk. Also remember to not do any resource intensive process until “don’t shutdown your computer until..” message goes away and the wallet is closed completely.
If you are fed up using core wallet they try a light weight client such as electrum.
Here is how to import private keys of core wallet into electrum wallet.
More guides related to core wallet:
