Moving to New PC - How to take my BTC/Bitcoin-Qt with me?

[The Extreme]

Greetings- 

I will be moving to a new PC in the next day or so.  Goodbye Vista, Hello Win7 for me!

I'm curious: how do I go about moving my Bitcoins and my copy of the blockchain to my new computer?
I don't want to have to download the entire chain again, and I'd really rather avoid any issues trying to move the coins to a new computer. 
I have my wallet backed up; can I just import it to the new install of Bitcoin-Qt on the new PC?
I know this is a noob question, but advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

The Extreme 

[wachtwoord]

If you have your wallet backed up then at least your Bitcoins are safe

If you want to avoid re-downloading the entire blockchain backup the entire C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin directory and restore it after installing Bitcoin-qt on the new PC.

[The Extreme]

Okay... that was my first guess but I wanted to be sure. 
BTW, your avatar rocks! 

[wachtwoord]

Okay... that was my first guess but I wanted to be sure.  

It never hurts to have more than one backup of the wallet.dat btw. The Blockchain can be redownloaded, the wallet cannot. Also be sure to encrypt the wallet.dat (and destroy all none-encrypted backups).

Good luck!

BTW, your avatar rocks!  

Thanks, I've always loved that line

[favdesu]

If you're on windows: Start -> search: %appdata% > Copy folder Bitcoin, that's your wallet and blockchain

edit: what wachtwoord wrote... fuck me I didn't read it

[Aalesund]

If you have your wallet backed up then at least your Bitcoins are safe

If you want to avoid re-downloading the entire blockchain backup the entire C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin directory and restore it after installing Bitcoin-qt on the new PC.

Thanks, I'll reinstall Windows 8, and this information will help me.

[Welsh]

If you don't want to go through all that and don't mind paying a little fee, then you could just send the Bitcoin to your new address.

[DeathProxy]

+1 to wachtwoord, thats the best thing to do, I do that plus also keep paper wallets and brain wallets to be safe.

[The Extreme]

The best laid plans of mice and men....

I got my new system all set up and tried to restore the entire Bitcoin folder.
and it failed with the error: "could not get best block" 
Not sure what that meant, but it put a damper on my new system party. 

Thanks for the advice though...

[Dare]

The best laid plans of mice and men....

I got my new system all set up and tried to restore the entire Bitcoin folder.
and it failed with the error: "could not get best block" 
Not sure what that meant, but it put a damper on my new system party. 

Thanks for the advice though...

Probably something to do with the downloaded blockchain, I can never seem to get it to work properly if I copy it anywhere. It should work fine after it reindexes/redownloads the chain, but that can take a few hours.

[Oren_Yul]

Hi,

I want to move my wallet to a new windows 8.1 (32bit) computer. The wallet is currently on an old windows 8.1 (64bit) machine.

Using Bitcoin version v0.8.5-beta.

1. I iunstalled a fresh copy of the bitcoin wallet in the new machine and waited for full sync.
2. I copied the old wallet.dat file from C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin to the new computer.

When I open the new-computer I see the wallet empty. I do not see any transactions and the balance is 0.00BTC.

The size of the "blocks" directory on the old PC is 12.9GB and on the new PC is 17.7MB - both report on the same number of blocks and that they are in sync.

any ideas?

[bitnpieces]

Thanks for this info too, I'll download at work now and transfer over to home PC.

Cheers

[birkomester]

Backup

[SquallLeonhart]

Backup your wallet.dat files. Remember to rename it before keeping in your USB drive or online drive... You know hacker likes wallet.dat...