Need help, feeling a bit lost here

I'm looking to set up a full node that acts as a private server, so I can use the blue toggle in the Sparrow wallet and have a private block explorer. On top of that, I want to run a Samourai Dojo to access my wallet from my Android device. I've got Bitcoin Core all synced up on my computer, just finished that today. But I messed up by installing the Windows version. Should I wipe my SSD and start fresh? Having a private block explorer would be awesome, and getting Samourai Dojo up and running on my machine would really help. I'm on Windows 10, and while I managed to get Ubuntu running, kind of, the virtual disk got corrupted when I was trying to set up Electrs. No clue what went wrong. I spent a few hours fiddling around with Ubuntu before it broke, and I downloaded a bunch of stuff, but I can't figure out where it all went since I thought I had made a partition on my SSD from the terminal. I tried following the guides for both Samourai and Electrs, but I couldn't finish either. I probably made a real mess of things. I have no idea where the Ubuntu home folder is, with all those partial downloads and builds. Plus, I think I might have created a partition on my SSD that already had Bitcoin Core running, but I don't know how to check or fix that. So, I've got a 2TB Samsung T7 SSD formatted to exFAT with the blockchain stored on it. It seems like I've got a full node since it's synced with the blockchain version 25.0. In Hyper-V manager, I deleted the corrupted Ubuntu virtual machine, but there's still a WSL virtual machine there. What should I do next?

Well, it's way safer if you run a Bitcoin node in a Linux OS. Based on Samourai Dojo documentation they didn't mention Windows OS but Linux environment so I think it's time-consuming if you still want to recover corrupted data from a virtual machine and fix them. It would be better to start over again but this time instead of using a Virtual Machine use an extra hard drive/SSD to install Linux OS and Bitcoin node. Edit: I found a guide that I think that fits to your needs if you want to stay using Windows you will need an extra device to install a Bitcoin full node server. Read this guide "[GUIDE] The simplest Full Node guide ever. [GUIDE]"

I am also a Windows user and while it's always said that Linux is much ore secure than Windoze, if you are not familiar with it you can make mistakes and end up worse than with Windoze. I am not familiar with Samurai, plus my setup works only for my computer, but I think it's not difficult to extend it to work on LAN, so for your Android too. I've made 2 tutorials for Windows users, one for Electrs, installed on a Linux subsystem in Windows, and another for Fulcrum (which is also an Electrum Server, but it's Windows exe). Maybe it worth taking a look to that direction too. This being said, I'll add that even if you reinstall everything under a fresh Linux or Windows, the blockchain files should be still good, you just have to make sure the bitcoin daemon uses those data folders/those files. Plus: from my experience WSL is faster than a Virtual Machine (Virtual Box).

I'm not a Windows user so not much help here. But I would like to share my modest knowledge. I followed these instructions to set up a full node behind Tor: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Setting_up_a_Tor_hidden_service I used "Linux Method 2". The page also describes how to do this with Windows. You have more plans, but maybe this will give you a start. If you can invest a bit of money in the project, you could consider purchasing a suitable v-server. This should cost between 10$ and 20$ for a Linux machine per month. Windows is probably more expensive.

Hello, Seems you guys all understand the issues I was having and have given me the answers I need, I will try working thru some of these ideas and then report back. I'm glad to hear that the blockchain files are probably fine and there won't be a need to re-synch One person mentioned that I could probably start over in Linux on my SSD but use the same directory as I already have a copy of the blockchain.  So, I can put a bootable OS on the external SSD and run bitcoin core and electrs on this?  That would be pretty cool I guess because then I could plug it into my laptop too if I was traveling. It seems the other alternative is continue with windows and my windows installation, as the core files are all in the ssd, and use wsl (this is what I was using the other day actually, not virtual box, but I had to enable virtualization in BIOS)

Hello. Since you have Ubuntu, you can do the following. Open a terminal and navigate to any directory you want. Let's say /home/<user>/Desktop then: Now you have bitcoin binaries installed on your device. You must know plug your external SSD on your Ubuntu machine. Let's say the SSD is mounted on /media/<SSD disk name> If you have all the blockchain data on the SSD and not in a sub-folder, you can simply run This will run bitcoin using the data from where you set it. Of course, on Ubuntu you can also use this guide, so you can have a GUI for your Bitcoin Core. Then you can set the blockchain directory once it loads, just like you did on Windows, through the GUI.