Old pre 2012 wallet files on bitcoin core question

[strimbello]

I will not react here anymore, as the attempts at scamming me keep pouring in.
Real help is rare, and the bitcoin core wallet is really not usable for this kind of stuff.
I managed to make some progress, but still, I remain trying to get the transactions out.

thank you all for all the help (all others and scammers were reported)

Makes you wonder why bitcoin is in the stat it's in.

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[Abdussamad]

if you enable pruning you'll have to download teh chain again each time you switch wallets. either don't enable pruning, use the multiwallet option or use dumpwallet to dump the private keys and then import them into a lite app like electrum. the latter is the answer to  the question about what to do if you don't know the addresses and want to export the private keys - dumpwallet dumps everything to file.

[keychainX]

Hi there,

I've got my old computer back from storage (2011-12) and have some older wallet.dat files on there (I've experimented with a lot of coins, but mined bitcoin as well back then).

I need some good and up to date advice or guides on how to access these wallets.
I've tried downloading bitcoin core 19.1 but the wallet files seem to "go past date" or something. I needed to de-activate pruning. (I did so, but then it downloads the while tsunami of data again at 1990s speeds:( )

If I download the whole blockchain again on bitcoin core, then shut it down and replace the wallet.dat it generated with my wallet from 2011, will it work?
Or are these older pre 2012 wallets incompatible?
If so... is there a way to get into these wallets (I have the passwords and so on)

A quick and dirty trick to check your wallet is open the .dat file with a text editor and search for the string "name". Usually a string starting with 1 should pop up, copy paste that into blockchain.com/explorer and pretty quickly you will find out if the wallet has balance or not.

In rare occations not all addresses are visible but this will quickly let you scan through all the files.

Good luck.
/KX