Old Wallet.dat

[lostdroid]

I wonder if someone could help me decide what to with an old wallet.dat that contains a small amount.  The wallet was used with Bitcoin-QT a few years ago to receive donations and no spend transactions have ever been made from it.  I started the Bitcoin-QT a few days ago and it's over a year behind.  It took over a day to get from 1 Year & 16 Days to 1 Year and 9 Days.  Bitcoin-QT is also currently on 0.9.3 and I'm not sure if upgrading to the latest will want to download the whole blockchain again.

Can anyone suggest a good and safe alternative to waiting for the blockchain to catch up?  I'm also concerned that as the wallet is old, the PRNG may not have been random enough.  I believe there are ways for hackers to monitor this once you start to spent and steal any remaining funds.  I would prefer to remain in control of my own wallet rather than import private keys into a web service.

Thanks, J

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[achow101]

You should definitely upgrade to the latest. At this time it is 0.11.2. Upgrading will not require you to redownload the blockchain and it will actually allow you to sync faster.

AFAIK there were no problem with the random number generators in previous versions so everything should be fine. There are no ways for people to steal your funds when sending from bitcoin core unless someone discovers a 0-day vulnerability in bitcoin core or you have malware on your computer.

[antonlevay]

As a work around you could just use a lighter software wallet like Mutlibit classic and import the private key in there and send the remaining bitcoins to your main wallet... just trying to think outside the box. Lighter software wallets like Multibit classic take about an hour to get synchronized.

[lostdroid]

Thanks for the responses guys.  I've just installed 0.11.2 and it's continuing to download the blockchain from where 0.9.3 was left off so I'll see how far it gets running over night.

J