Hello,
I have downloaded my wallet.dat file onto the latest Litecoin Core and recovered my litecoin.
When I made this litecoin purchase in 2013 I dont recall creating a passphrase, otherwise I am sure I would have recorded it. So to secure my updated wallet I encrypted it today and then I was asked to change the passphrase. But to change the passphrase you need the old passphrase. Something which I dont have.
I have the wallet encryption but no passphrase. Does this mean my coins are lost?
Grateful for any help here.
Thanks
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If you have the wallet but no passprhase, your coins are lost (unless you can crack the passprhase).
You can verify if your wallet.dat backup is encrypted by opening it on a text editor. If you can read it and find private keys in there, then it is not encrypted; otherwise it is.
Thanks for your reply,
This was driving me crazy but I saw an old thread of someone who did the same back in 2014 and the advise was to replace the current .dat file with the old .dat file that I had saved before I encrypted the wallet.
I replaced the. dat file and opened the Litecoin Core and would you believe that it doesnt ask me for a password. Boy, am I relieved.
Drinks are on me!
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Awesome!
Please spend/invest those old Litecoin on something really good. 
If you have an interesting amount of LTC, I would suggest you to purchace a hardware wallet that supports segwit (like the ledger nano s).
¡Saludos!
Well, if you insist 
MPtzS8qciS7E1anJM2hwBTZnnFD9WCL8Y4 (this is a segwit litecoin addr)
Have a pint (Guinness) on me.
Slainte!
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Hey Brett,
did you ever figure out how the .dat file was encrypted in the first place. Unfortunately this happened to me and I’m 100% sure I did not encrypt it.
Hi there,
In my case I encrypted the wallet just yesterday…
On doing so I was then asked to enter a passphrase. I hadn’t expected this and I took some minutes to think of something easy to remember.Before I entered the passphrase it automatically changed the demand to " change your passphrase" . Off course to be able to do this you need the ‘old’ passphrase, which I never had. So my problem was I took too long to come up with a passphrase. Hope that clarifies my situation.
Please try the method described above to determine if your .dat (or the backup of your .dat) is encrypted or not.