Migrating Wallet

[josor]

Hi all,
Years ago I mined some bitcoin and have sort of forgotten about it since then. Now I find I can almost buy a new car with the profit.  

However my bitcoin wallet is on an old machine with an old version of the bitcoin software. I decided to install the newest client on my main machine, and tested to see if I could send 5 BTC from the old one to the new one. It seemed that the old client did not want to send as it said in the status column: 0\unconfirmed: network problems?.

So I am wondering what the easiest way to transfer the wallet or funds from the old machine to the new one?

I read something about cancelling a transaction with a program called pysomething. Should I do that and then transfer the wallet file? If so, then how would I do that?

Thanks for any help on the matter,

Josor

[Dare]

Has your old client finished redownloading the blockchain? If not, that could be the problem.
Also, that program is called pywallet: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=35214.0

[josor]

Yes it finished downloading the blockchain.

Can I just copy/paste the wallet file if I cancel the transaction with pywallet?

[Dare]

Since it's an old client, I'm not sure if it would work, but so long as you make a backup of it (or just leave a copy with the old client) and a backup of the wallet on your newer computer before you try, it won't hurt if it doesn't work. Also, you should make a backup before using pywallet, as I'm not sure what it will do if the wallet format is different from what it expects. Backups are always a good idea.

[josor]

Thanks!

I have several backups of the old wallet file. The new one is empty, so no biggie there.

[josor]

BTW, can I just use one of the backup wallets to copy/paste since the transaction never went through?

[BenTuras]

So you have two PC's. The old one with enough BTC in the wallet, and a new one to which you might have sent five BTC.

I would proceed like this:
Stop all bitcoin programs on both PC's
Make a backup of the wallet.dat file on the new PC, call it wallet-dat-new
Make a backup of the wallet.dat file on the old PC, call it wallet-dat-old
Install version 0.8 of bitcoin-qt on the new PC. This version is fine for you, in case you know about the fork yesterday. You're not going to mine.
Start bitcoin-qt 0.8 on the new PC and let it run for a minute so it has downloaded a little bit of the blockchain.
Stop bitcoin-qt on the new PC.
Copy wallet-dat-old to wallet.dat on the new PC, overwriting the existing wallet.dat (you have a backup of it too)
Start bitcoin-qt on the new PC and let it download the complete blockchain. This will take a while. Your amount of BTC should appear while it is downloading.
You now have the latest bitcoin-qt program with your BTC in it.

Once you succeeded, you'll get instructions to check for the five BTC  

Which brand car are you looking at ?  

Good luck!

[josor]

Thanks Ben,

I've been away for a few days and haven't been home to try it yet, but thanks for the answer.

I don't think I'll buy a new car just yet as I am happy with the one I have. Hopefully bitcoin will continue its rise and I'll be able to afford an M5