Bitcoin Forum

I used to have Bitcoin Wallet.  There seemed to be problems in sending bitcoins so I did what I thought was upgrading but instead found I had a separate installation of Bitcoin Core v0.11.1.  This worked with no problem, but I wasn't sure what to do with the original Bitcoin wallet which was still showing in my programmes.

One day, on autopilot, I clicked on the wrong one, i.e. the Bitcoin Wallet, which seemed to corrupt a database.  I closed it down and attempted to open the Bitcoin Core and got a dialogue box advising Error opening block database.  Do I want to rebuild the block database now? 

When I say yes, it proceeds to take days, literally, rebuilding and re-indexing the block, going back over 6 years! 

Three times in a row, after leaving my lap top on 24/7 for several days to try and catch up with the indexing, my lap top has crashed (blue screen of death) and then the whole process had to start all over again.

I want to know if there is a way for me to just copy a file from my lap top and transfer it over to another installation of bitcoin Core (or a more reliable wallet), so I can move my bitcoin balance over to a more reliable machine.

Any advice would be appreciated!  Step by step of what to do.  Thank you!

Intermediary

Yes, the file you are looking for is called wallet.dat

#1 close bitcoin core
#2 open run (Win + R), enter %APPDATA%\Bitcoin and confirm with ok. It will open an explorer window at the correct location.
#3 copy the wallet.dat
#4 find the same folder on the other machine
#5 rename(!) the existing wallet.dat to e.g. wallet.dat.old
#6 put the copy from #3 in its place
#7 start bitcoin core


If you want to use an entirely different wallet programm you need to export the private keys, but for that you will need a working bitcoin core version. It must not be fully synced, but you must be able to access the console (Help -> Debug window -> console)

That is very kind of you to lay it out for me like this!  I shall report back!