keystoremyetherwalletprivate-key
My hard drive pretty much melted because Dell laptops suck. I saved my private key and would like to access myetherwallet from a new computer. When I enter the private key on its own as a "Keystore File (UTC / JSON)" it wont accept it. I assume thats because it needs to be in a specific format. Can I format a Notepad file so it will accept my private key? If so, how?
Thanks in advance
You can do this from MyEtherWallet. Please triple check you are on the right site! Look for the EV-SLL notice:
From the "Send Ether & Tokens" tab choose "Mnemonic phrase". Type your list of words in there and you ought to be able to access the account.
There are several solutions depending on what you want to use instead of myetherwallet. A standard one would be to use geth and mist.
Once you will have geth installed, there should be an ethereum folder somewhere on your computer. On linux, it is probably ~/.ethereum. For geth to find your keys, you must copy them in the .ethereum/keystore/ folder.
Then geth and mist (using geth) should be able to use your keys.
It is a good practice for you to copy your myetherwallet keystore/ folder on at least one device you own (even without installing geth): then if anything happens to the website (like a DOS attack) you still can spend them by installing geth or any other ethereum client.
Best Answer
You can access your wallet using your private key by visiting MyEtherWallet, going to "Send Ether & Tokens", selecting "Private Key", enter in your private key and click the unlock button. After that you should be able to access your wallet again.