Recover lost bitcoin wallets with Py Wallet without a recovery service

So, is PyWallet created by Jack-Jack the top choice for digging through old hard drives to find lost or deleted bitcoin wallets without needing a recovery service? Are there any simpler alternatives for Windows? Also, does anyone have or want to put together a comprehensive guide that covers everything from installing and using Python and Py Wallet to setting up dependencies, paths, and the commands needed for locating, extracting, and dumping wallets and private keys...?

If you know how to use it yes possible it can help recover your lost/deleted Bitcoin wallets without any party. It works on Windows since it only requires Python 2.7 on your PC. JackJack already has a detailed guide on his signature check them here https://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=pywallet

It works on windows yes, but I got some errors in the code because of ripemd160 and i ended up implementing a pure python ripemd160 script and imported that instead. I did that on linux though it may work fine on windows i am not sure. But if you accur errors with that ripemd160 you have to do the same thing. By the way I got the pure python ripemd160 from github, here so you can just use that; https://github.com/karpathy/cryptos/blob/main/cryptos/ripemd160.py

Have you lost your working pywallet setup in 2019? It's been 6years so that must be the case. Anyways, if you can't find the old post containing the guides by HCP that you've followed, it's still saved in your post history, Here (actual guide in the posts before this): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5161349.msg52313697#msg52313697 This would have been perfect for you since it's updated with full python3 support: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5547957.0 But its dependency "bsddb3" will be more tedious to compile in Windows than the whole setup combined. (plus there's no available guide) And I can't find any pre-build wheel for non-ARM Windows and python 3.12/3.13 of it.

I gave up as I couldn't quit use the commands back then, that PC is useless now and the program is mostly corrupt/damaged, the current crypto prices ignited me back up again, so I bought a new PC to start fresh but want to do it right this time. as I'm reading about Pywallet now, there is way too much for me to know about how to download and operate both Python and PYwallet (which I don't) from how to download python to operate for all users as an admin, to dependencies, paths, virtual environment, all programs even found wallets have to be downloaded/ saved in the same directory as python, having to specify the name/path to each wallet to dump keys..... the previous install may have worked but unfortunately I didn't know any of that!! it may come natural to you as a practicing programmer but certainly all overwhelming and extremely tedious to me ( I don't even know what a wheel or non-arm windows are!).....so since I don't want to do the same trial-and-error thing again, I was wondering if someone had an idiot guide ( my level of idiot!!) or can walk me through the most basic details, or just install it on my new PC for me to use on my own even for a fee.

I'll check if I already posted a guide related to it. For the latter, since you mentioned a fee, you can post a "Buy Service" topic in Services board (link) to find someone reputable who's willing to set it up for you. Make sure to check the user's "Trust Rating" before allowing them to control your PC or before scheduling a meetup. And also important, topics in that board is exclusively for those that pay in BTC. -edit- I searched, but those threads that I remember are mostly for the commands but don't contain the full setup from Python to Pywallet setup. You should at least post your PC's OS so if ever, writing a step-by-step guide could be shorter and specific to your case.

Thank you so much for looking into it, I may try this link you sent.