K I opened my recovered wallet and checked that addresses on the current and old one and they're exactly the same for some reason

I tried the open wallet thing.  So when I open multi bit, I have .25 bitcoins displayed, I want to add the recovered coins to that amount.  When I did the open wallet, and went to the destination i saved the recovered one on, it loads it but seems like a duplicated of the .25 one.  I'm not really sure how many i had on the recovered one, i think like .19 or something, but I'm trying to add that to the .25 I already have

So I reformatted my laptop with my wallet on it, I was able to recover the wallet with software.  I have re-installed multibit.  I want to import the old private keys into the newly installed multibit, bit I can't seem to find the private keys.  Where are they located exactly?