Can't Unlock Any Of My Four Geth-Generated Accounts, 30,000 ETH Inside

[testerguy]

I thought I should edit to include an update right at the top of the body: three of the four Geth accounts have been unlocked thanks to @DcyMatrix's suggestion below

Requesting advice/help in solving this problem:

I created four Geth accounts in late May, and gave each a different password, which I carefully noted down (I wrote the passwords down on paper, then I entered them into the Geth command line).

Yesterday I tried to unlock the accounts, and none of the passwords worked, for any of the accounts. I'm transcribing the passwords from the same piece of paper that I initially read from when entering them into the Geth client, so it's very unlikely that this was an input error.

I've searched the internet and found these four links where people report having similar problems:

Mist Wallet password problem - https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4na19x/mist_wallet_password_problem/

Mist Wallet says wrong password, be careful - https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4jzxft/mist_wallet_says_wrong_password_be_careful/

Mist password wrong error 0.7.6 - ethereum/mist#923

Password Assistance Needed :) - https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/8422/password-assistance-needed

A common factor in all of these is accounts being created in May, so it may have something to do with a version of Geth that was in wide use in May.

Someone in the discussion linked by the second URL from the top mentioned fixing their problem with Jaxx Kryptokit. I tried importing one of the accounts into the Jaxx Kryptokit wallet:

https://ethereumwallet.com/beta/index.html#dYb9

and put in the password, and it did not work, so I do believe that the password is wrong.

I found this bug report relating to both Mist and Geth:

ethereum/mist#182 (comment)

I'm wondering if this could be related.

I created two new accounts today with two new passwords, and was able to unlock both with their passwords, but I did that with Geth 1.5.0-unstable and the version I was running in late May was different.

If I lose this ETH this would set me back a few years, so I'm very anxious right now. Any help would be appreciated.

Edit, more details:

I was running Geth 1.5.0 unstable, with this snapshot: 1.5.0+986SNAPSHOT20160511110231trusty-0ubuntu1

So this is the snapshot as of May 11th 2016

[DcyMatrix]

Had the same problem, the way I got around it then as får as I recall. Was ro type in the password in a simple text editor, confirm it was typed correctly. Then cope & paste from the editor to the Mist wallet. And it worked for me.

[testerguy]

I imported the keystore into a new machine with Mist, and none of the passwords worked, in any of the ways I tried. I'll try again later tonight/tomorrow and pay attention to use the method you mention.

[DcyMatrix]

As you I tried multiple times to type it in, I am guessing that the copy & paste method from a simple text editor fixes the problem because for some reason the keyboard input is just not always correct in the terminal.

[DcyMatrix]

Good luck! Let the rest of us know if it's a viable workaround in your case as well 👍

[testerguy]

Thanks. If I get it working I'll be sure to update everyone.

[testerguy]

I don't know how to message people on Github. Do I just mention them? @hiddentao, do you have any idea if the carriage return bug you mention here:

ethereum/mist#182 (comment)

could have affected passphrase entry during account creation in Geth?

@teasider and @DavidMc0, were you able to solve your locked account problems?

[fjl]

@testerguy That's definitely a possibility. I'll try to build a workaround/test version on Monday that unlocks with and without the carriage return character appended to the password.

[testerguy]

Thank you @fjl.

[Metatronovich]

@testerguy - I wasnt able to open that wallet. I just saw that bug you were talking about and I hope
@fjl will be able to deliver that version - it might be my problem as well (as I dont have any other passwords than the ones I've written down and use, just like you.)

My password contains one special character with is "!"

Thank you for this topic - Its nice to see more options as I've used out every possible one i could find with google (Except this one with the carriage return character)

[testerguy]

What OS are you running @teasider? Do you know what version of Geth you were running when you created your accounts?

If you want to email me directly, my email address is bashdesher@gmail.com. This goes for anyone else who wants to communicate privately as well.

[Metatronovich]

@testerguy I am (and was) running Windows 7 64bit.

I'm not sure what geth version I was running but the date it was created was around the end of May - and i was always up to date with whatever version was out.

[testerguy]

Ok. Also should be noted that windows uses \r\n for carriage return, whereas OSX and Linux (which I'm on) use \n. It would be nice if we could somehow reproduce the bug with the version of Geth we were running at the time.

[Metatronovich]

I also have to add that I've made around 4-5 wallets at that time, all with the same password - and its just this one wallet that doesn't seems to work.

I've never used any other passwords, I tried using a password variation tool which gives back a list of "possible typing mistakes" (one or two letters for each character) - which didn't work either (that was about 50 hours of brute forcing with that list)

So this error you just wrote about might be my last chance, Hope we figure it out for your fund's sake and mine.

[DavidMc0]

@testerguy I haven't been able to resolve my issue yet.

I'm running on Windows 10 64 bit.

I also have special characters in my passwords, sometime including "!"

I'll be away for a couple of weeks, but will try to provide any useful information once I'm back, or test any possible fixes.

Best of luck on this everyone!