Bitcoin-Qt wallet issues

Greetings! I feel bad for creating an account just to ask for help instead of being able to assist others, but I wanted to make sure Bitcoin was really something I wanted to get into. Also, I do have a TL;DR version of this, but I have to write it all out before I can condense the issue. My apologies again.

When I first started, I was reading up on Bitcoin and settled with using a client to manage the wallet instead of any of the online places. I went with Bitcoin-Qt. At the time, it was at V. 0.8.1, and I waited for it to download the blockchain. It generated my Bitcoin address, 1HVQFur9pMwRvf92t1AmYatsSRUCR3a2tm. I backed up the original Bitcoin wallet.dat I made to my external hard drive.

Later on, I had to format my computer and reinstall. Well, I wanted Win7 on here and to finally retire XP as my main OS. I backed up my wallet.dat again (this time, it would have more transactions done on my main address) and installed the latest version of Bitcoin-Qt. I loaded my wallet backup and tried to run Bitcoin-Qt. It spit out the error "wallet.dat corrupt". My first thought was, if I made it for client v.0.8.1 and the new version was 0.8.5, maybe the issue was an update changed the wallet format. Hey, I have a backup of the original installer I used for bitcoin-Qt 0.8.1, so why not? I uninstalled the newer version, made sure the Bitcoin data was wiped from my APPDATA folder, and installed the older one.

I got the same error. I tried both wallet.dat backups I had.

So, I went online to see what the issue is, and I was having a hard time finding other people with the exact same issue. Either means I am very unlucky, or my Google-fu is not strong. Either way, I was lead to using PyWallet, meaning I had to install not only Python and a plethora of stuff to make it work, but I also needed a way to import those keys into Bitcoin-Qt.

So I used it to dump the keys to a file, and I tried to import the keys into Bitcoin-Qt by using the console. The error I got back, when trying any combination of commands I found online, was error -32601 Method not found. I went to search for another client that can import the keys, and I found Electrum. It had the option to import private keys, but when I import any combination of keys for that Bitcoin address within the dump file, they don't come up with the same address, and instead, they come up with other addresses. What I did then was write a batch file that would extract every single key from the exported data, and I imported them all into Electrum. While the majority of the keys i tried failed to do anything, I was able to access two addresses that hashed out with those keys, which only accounted for about 30,000 satoshi's, as opposed to the 500,000 satoshis I have in the wallet. I guess my inability to really explain further means I need to read up more on the wallet format...

Now, at this point, I am completely torn on how I can fix this issue! I just want to move all my bitcoins into a single address on a client that isn't going to break, and I don't even know if Bitcoin-Qt broke because of something I did. Also, for the sake of my sanity, what would be a good client that is less likely to break my wallet.dat? I mean, this is a bad way to ask because I could just be having a bad stretch of luck with an otherwise fantastic client, but .. I mean .. I just don't want this to ever happen again if I can avoid it.

DL;DR: I have a wallet.dat that won't load in any version of Bitcoin-Qt, how do I pull the keys out and use them in another client? What client would you recommend?