bitcoin qt -0.8.5

[noob_jul11]

I had a wallet.dat file from long time ago ... thought I put in the wallet to check on the wealth and health.

I just loaded bitcoin-qt 0.8.5 and it's running on Win XP 32 bit. Replaced the wallet and re-launched bitcoin-qt. The flash screen is gone but the application never did come up. In place of the flash screen is a squarish rectangle that was last being displayed.

On the top right hand corner, bitcoin qt seems to be running. However, I cannot see anything other than that.

Any ideas what's going on?

[Barek]

A fresh bitcoin-qt installation should show you the UI and stuff.

If you replace the wallet.dat, you'll have to run bitcoin-qt.exe with the -rescan parameter.

[noob_jul11]

I downloaded the zip format of bitcoin-qt.
Then I launched bitcoin-qt.exe to create all the files / folders on %App Data%/bitcoin

There's already a wallet.dat that got created as well. So I closed the application. Then renamed the wallet.dat that got created and copy in my wallet. I then relaunched the application.
Is that not how it's done? Will I need to run bitcoin-qt.exe -rescan from command prompt?

Thanks!

[Barek]

I'm fairly sure that you do.

Somehow the client needs to scan the blockchain for transactions to addresses that you know the private key of.

You can also extract the private keys and import them in a hybrid client (blockchain.info) or a lightweight client (electrum).

Code:

bitcoind dumpprivkey publicaddr