user8704: I have made a few major mistakes and am making a last ditch effort to recover my bitcoins. I had a wallet.dat file on a previous installation of windows, after reformatting (with no previous back up, I know I know...) I realized my mistake and immediately attempted to recover the wallet.dat file with Recurva. Recurva listed the file as "excellent" condition.
When attempting to open the file in the bitcoin client, I receive the error:
"Wallet corrupted - salvage failed".

The wallet is encrypted, the password is known.
I have attempted to do a wallet dump using pywallet, however, I always receive the error:
ERROR:root:Couldn't open wallet.dat/main. Try quitting Bitcoin and running this again.

The command I am running:
python pywallet.py --passphrase=mypassphrasehere --datadir=C:\path\to\recovered\wallet --dumpwallet

I am unable to find any more resources for getting around this error - I do not have bitcoin running (even after a restart), and I am referencing a wallet that is outside of the bitcoin data directory (and also tried having the default path with bitcoin not running)
Has anyone else run into this issue? Should I assume the wallet file is corrupt and cut my loses? I've exhausted my google fu and can not seem to find any other steps to recover this wallet.

user52446: You should try to recover the wallet.dat with a different data recovery tool, I have good experiences using GetDataBack and PhotoRec. GetDataBack lets you choose different backups/versions of the file system, try all of them.

8704: <p>I have made a few major mistakes and am making a last ditch effort to recover my bitcoins. I had a wallet.dat file on a previous installation of windows, after reformatting (with no previous back up, I know I know...) I realized my mistake and immediately attempted to recover the wallet.dat file with Recurva. Recurva listed the file as "excellent" condition.</p>

<p>When attempting to open the file in the bitcoin client, I receive the error:</p>

<pre><code>"Wallet corrupted - salvage failed".
</code></pre>

<p>The wallet is encrypted, the password is known.</p>

<p>I have attempted to do a wallet dump using pywallet, however, I always receive the error:</p>

<pre><code>ERROR:root:Couldn't open wallet.dat/main. Try quitting Bitcoin and running this again.
</code></pre>

<p>The command I am running:</p>

<pre><code>python pywallet.py --passphrase=mypassphrasehere --datadir=C:\path\to\recovered\wallet --dumpwallet
</code></pre>

<p>I am unable to find any more resources for getting around this error - I do not have bitcoin running (even after a restart), and I am referencing a wallet that is outside of the bitcoin data directory (and also tried having the default path with bitcoin not running)</p>

<p>Has anyone else run into this issue? Should I assume the wallet file is corrupt and cut my loses? I've exhausted my google fu and can not seem to find any other steps to recover this wallet.</p>
 52446: <p>You should try to recover the wallet.dat with a different data recovery tool, I have good experiences using <a href="https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">GetDataBack</a> and <a href="http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PhotoRec</a>. GetDataBack lets you choose different backups/versions of the file system, try all of them.</p>
