help with connecting sparrow wallet to full node

Hey folks, Stuck trying to connect my sparrow wallet to Bitcoin Core. URL: 127.0.0.1, port 8332, standard Data Folder: D:\Bitcoin\testnet Use Proxy: no Test connection says "Connection refused: connect". What am I missing? Config file issue? Or is my Data Folder wrong? Just set up a full node on an old laptop, my tech guy wiped it clean, and I want to use it for BTC only. Got a 2T external hard drive for the data.

You gotta use the TestNet RPC port instead of the MainNet one. Default is 18332, but you can change it in the bitcoin.conf file with rpcport=18332 or through command line. Also, if you set rpcuser and rpcpassword in Bitcoin Core, make sure they match in Sparrow.

Got it, thanks! But now I’m wondering, is this testnet node any good? I want to do real transactions, not just play around. Did I mess up during installation? Should I reinstall and set it up for mainnet?

The drive setup is solid, but I don’t know your laptop specs. Bitcoin Core doesn’t need high-end hardware. It’ll work on old gear too, just takes longer to sync, especially with HDDs and low RAM. Maybe tweak your dbcache settings to speed it up, but don’t go too low or high for your RAM.

It really depends on what you’re after... If you wanna learn Bitcoin without risking real cash, testnet is awesome. Perfect for experimenting, scripting, that sort of stuff. But if you need to send or receive actual value, you gotta switch to mainnet.

I’m already running a pruned node on my main laptop, connected to Sparrow and my cold wallets. Did some small tests and larger transfers for cold storage. Not into coding really, but I do wanna try multisig later. So for this full node I just synced, can I switch it to mainnet or do I have to start over?

You’ll need to re-sync if you switch from testnet to mainnet. Also, mainnet has way more data than testnet. If testnet took you days, mainnet will probably take much longer.

Got it, thanks for the heads up. I’ll uninstall the test version, grab the new core version 27, and start fresh. No rush, BTC isn’t going anywhere.

Nice to see people sticking around! By the way, if you’re running a daemon on testnet, the data goes in a testnet3 subfolder. You don’t necessarily have to uninstall to switch to mainnet. Just edit your bitcoin.conf and restart your daemon. This way you keep your testnet data and wallet safe for later.