Thanks for opening with that, and for telling me not to rush. That's pretty much what I wanted to hear. There wasn't a consensus of advice, and this doesn't fill me with confidence.

My worries were that I couldn't transfer/copy/move my wallet without knowing additional keys/passwords or having to do something clever, and/or that a software upgrade would loose my wallet or make it inaccessible. My experience so far has not been great - I lost 12.9 on an exchange that closed down and a few more coins in a mining group I can't access anymore and some from the Ubuntu machine I was mining from - loosing the rest of my wallet to a software update would suck.
I never really understood what I was doing, but had a wallet with some coins and figured I'd make the best of a bad situation when the machine started bluescreening - and then discovered I couldn't transfer them.

I've now got confidence that I can safely use that wallet on a different PC, and have located and taken a copy of the walllet.dat file.
I believe I can just download a new Bitcoin Core and use the same wallet.

So I've built a new PC, will get all the installs done, and hopefully its plain sailing after that.

Also somebody mentioned forks. Is this a thing that effects me?

There was mention of Electrum. And seems to be a lot of different wallets out there. I'm assuming I can ignore this as noise?

OK Thanks.

I've found the wallet.dat file and made a copy of it. There isn't a "copy/backup wallet" option in the client, I guess its too old.

I have questions
1) "You can't send any coins if you have a password on your wallet."
I've sent coins before and don't remember a password.

2)
if there is no password, this means anybody with that wallet file can spend my coins? no additional security.

3)
If I install a new version and copy that in, then those to TXs should happen right? including the 0.01 fee. Which is going to cost me almost a hundred bucks?

Thanks for helping with the wallet file. I'm feeling safer already I think.
---
R

So, I've got an old bitcoin thing on my PC.
But the PC is bluescreening and about to die, so I wanted to transfer off the coins because they are worth something.
I setup a new wallet on a different PC and tried transferring 0.01 to test it was working and it didn't.
So I read on on fees. fees didn't really exist before I don't think. you could just transfer.
But the client said the minimum fee was 0.01 which sounds like a lot, so I sent 1.00 with a 0.01 fee.

Anyway both are "gone" from my wallet. But are 0/unconfirmed haven't arrived at the destination either.

I don't think I have any credentials to recover this wallet. I don't even know what I'd need.
But I can't transfer its coins either.

So maybe a software update fixes this? But if I do that will it lose my wallet? how will it connect to it? will i need to know keys and passwords and things? Cos I doubt I do. It was 8 years ago.

Can I safely update the software without loosing the wallet, and without needing to know secret keys and passwords?
Or is there another way to get confirmations?

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: 0.3.22-beta
Operating System: Win7-7601
System Hardware Specs: Intel-i7, 20GB Ram, ?? don't know what else is relevant
Description of Problem: Sending coins is just coming up 0/unconfirmed
Any Related Addresses:   1Afe6EABknu7eePKcz4FihG1x6Fj835RTe
Any Related Transaction IDs: I don't know how to get this.
Screenshot of the problem: Couldn't work out how to attach an image.
Log Files from the Bitcoin Client: .. any help finding these ?

This is the transaction details on my client
Status: 0/unconfirmed
Date: 08/11/2019 21:44
To: NTROGER 18XvrmGDb7UbKeFkPSSbSH7UxZ7msZu66b
Debit: -1.00
Transaction fee: -0.01
Net amount: -1.01

Status: 0/unconfirmed
Date: 04/11/2019 21:10
To: NTROGER 18XvrmGDb7UbKeFkPSSbSH7UxZ7msZu66b
Debit: -0.01
Net amount: -0.01

My address is? 1Afe6EABknu7eePKcz4FihG1x6Fj835RTe
But it looks like there are several receiving addresses.