I want to restore 27 word paper wallet but missing the last 9 words

Hello, I have an old daedalus installed from years ago on my computer with Windows 7 Pro.
I made a paper wallet, but cant seem to find it anymore…I have found the PDF on my computer, but it is missing the last 9 words of the 27 total words.
Is there a way to brute force the paper wallet without those 9 words?
I have tried to run daedalus again and it hangs and does not open.
I downloaded a new version, and when I run the install it says I need to upgrade windows.
I have the 12 words from my original wallet which I have tried to use to restore on Yoroi, but it says that there is no balance and does not continue.
I know I must find the paper wallet, but is there any chance of brute forcing the wallet instead? It is looking more and more like I wont be able to find it anymore and I have a nice chunk of ADA locked in that wallet.
I found 5 different backups of the paper wallet on my computer, email, dropbox etc, but they are all the same pdf, and dont have my last 9 words.
Any suggestions?

It could be that your formatting is messed up in your PDF preventing you from seeing it. Try opening it up in something else, Kindle, Apple Books, or even an editor

I have tried to use to restore on Yoroi, but it says that there is no balance and does not continue.

The error you’re probably seeing right now (assuming you tried to restore on Yoroi recently) is that our server no longer handles processing wallet upgrades from Daedalus to Yoroi (as a result of us upgrading stuff to Shelley)

The missing 9 words is suppose to be your paper wallet password on Daedalus. You might remember that when you created your paper wallet, it asked you to write 9 words by hand afterwards. If you don’t have that, you

It is possible to brute-force the 9-word, but is not financially doable for the average person

Is there a service or company that you know of that can do this for a price?
The missing 9 words were written on paper, but I am not currently able to find that piece of paper anywhere.
It may not be financially viable now, but maybe one day it will be if I still cannot find the original words I wrote down…I think there is just over 100k ADA on that wallet.

Did you find it man? 100k cardano right now… Holy shit.

Number of possible word combinations would be 2048^7, so looping through about 1.51115727451829E+23 combinations to go through.
Only slightly better then trying to find a seed phrase for a random 12-word wallet.
If the OP knows his original Cardano deposit address, that would slightly help in creating a program that loops through seed phrases, generates index0 address and compares it against the known address. I played recently with ADA account address generation in Javascript and think the libraries are there to make such script, but using the compiled libraries directly in Rust would probably be faster.

@FrancoisBTC, try asking someone with a supercomputer for costing/feasibility assessment. Could start here, I guess: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/recovered-bitcoin-keys-for-300k-worth-of-btc/ (slightly different use case, but they might be able to write a simple script and tell you how long/how much it would cost to loop through all the 2048^7 word combinations on their supercomputer).

Good luck!

No, didnt find it and stopped looking…it might turn up, but at this point I consider them gone

Thanks for the info, i’ll check it out. Yep I know the address (DdzFFzCqrht5k22mVveKXEWrxspRAsp7H3BaHGMvg4Hp2xLenKZu6ktNPrFAUMbAyNmeVYXMBcAhrmpNrFrb2WMR34irxEa4Fz8Adxkj)
I cant even open the wallet on my old PC because the windows version is wrong and after a Daedalus update it stopped opening. I downloaded a new version of the software, but cant open that either on my computer.
I did ask Dave at Wallet Recovery Services, who does similar kinds of things, and he said there are too many combinations.

Have you tried copying Daedalus account files from the old PC into the new PC where the up to date version of Daedalus is installed?
Something like this:

Make sure you make/keep copy of all Daedalus files from the old PC.

Fun fact: yesterday I did a rough estimate and on my old-ish PC finding those last 9 words would take 1^12 years or so :slight_smile:

No, I dont have a new PC, my PC is windows 7.
Do you need to download the whole blockchain to be able to import and move the coins?
Maybe I can boot off a linux usb and then install the linux version of the wallet, load the secret key there, and move the funds to an exchange.

The Linux idea might work, but I’m not familiar with Linux version workings.
Before you do anything, make sure you copy all the folders mentioned in the article above to some pendrive.
If your pendrive/external HDD is big enough, you could also try installing Win10 (a trial version would do) on the external harddrive, install new Daedalus there and open folders through that Win10.
Whatever you do, avoid formatting your current C: drive, and again, make a backup of files/folders used by old Daedalus into some pendrive.
Don’t rush things. Good luck!

I’ll try it out. I see in the windows folder is a secrets.key file with a 2021 date, maybe from when I tried to get in and reinstall the new wallet, and also a secrets.key.lock file but that is 0bytes and has the 2018 date.
Do you perhaps have any idea if that old file is still valid with 0bytes, or why its got .lock as a suffix?
I am wondering now if me attempting to install the new version messed things up.

0 byte file is useless, I guess it just holds information about current user when Daedalus is running.
Let’s hope new Daedalus didn’t wipe/overwrite old secrets.key file account with a new one…
Let’s hope the new installer just updated the secrets.key with ‘last login date’ info or something like that.
Try checking the folder with some file recovery software:

but if the files are on C drive, the blocks where they 2018 version was stored was probably overwritten by some Windows temp files several times.
What version of old Daedalus were you using? Reach to IOHK technical support for specific advice/info on how to recover that account. Do you have any IT nerd friend that could have a look at your PC?