Cannot access wallet.dat

[stoopid]

<Noob warning>

Okay here's my predicament: 
-Downloaded bitcoin and the little window showing my address popped up.
-Immediately ordered $290 worth of bitcoin via check to this address assuming that i'd be able to easily access it.
-Next time on the computer find out that nothing happens when clicking on the bitcoin icon.
-Open up mybitcoin account the next day and email back recipient of check to send btc to the address generated from there once it clears.
-Wait and eventually find out that this person sent the btc to the original address anyway.
-I cannot access this ATM as clicking on wallet.dat in my appdata/roaming folder(windows 7) does not work with any of the programs.  The only one where something comes up is in notepad where a long stream of characters such as "¨ý´H¦…TœG" is displayed.  Also, when just clicking on the bitcoin icon now, instead of nothing happening, the error report " exception: 22dbrunrecoveryexception...." comes up.  Clicking ok here lead to "This application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way."

Maybe i'm missing something completely obvious here, but can someone please help me access this so that i can just send the btc to my mybitcoin wallet?  Thanks.

[mewantsbitcoins]

Firstly you need to back up your wallet to a safe place on your HDD or flash drive.
DO NOT EDIT WALLET.DAT WITH A TEXTEDITOR

Then do the following:

1. Uninstall the client
2. Download the current version from bitcoin.org
3. Install it
4. Copy your backed up wallet to \Users\[your user name]\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\
5. Start the new client and wait until blockchain is up to date

You should see the correct balance.

[skittixch]

we're sitting at block 123510 at the moment, so you'll have some downloading to do.  Bitcoin works by making sure every node is looking at the same transaction record, and there are quite a few records to keep track of.  In the future, less downloading time will be required as only sections of the block chain will need to be downloaded.  As long as you've kept your original wallet file, and you put it in the proper directory, you should be able to see your bitcoins.

[stoopid]

Firstly you need to back up your wallet to a safe place on your HDD or flash drive.
DO NOT EDIT WALLET.DAT WITH A TEXTEDITOR

Then do the following:

1. Uninstall the client
2. Download the current version from bitcoin.org
3. Install it
4. Copy your backed up wallet to \Users\[your user name]\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\
5. Start the new client and wait until blockchain is up to date

You should see the correct balance.

Thanks, but this did not work.  Also, i still get the " exception: 22dbrunrecoveryexception...."  error after clicking on the bitcoin icon from the new icon.

[mewantsbitcoins]

stoopid,

Could it be that your login consists of non-latin characters? If so try creating a new user account with latin characters only. It's a bug. Don't forget to keep your wallet backed up and safe