wallet.dat won't load

[MrSilverhand]

Hello,

I have a rather old wallet.dat file (with most likely nothing in it, but I thought I'd make double sure). I've just downloaded bitcoin core and the whole blockchain, but it gets stuck when trying to open the wallet itself. Should it take a long time and I just have to wait, or is there a problem and a way to fix it?

I am on Fedora 35

Many thanks!

[LoyceV]

I've just downloaded bitcoin core and the whole blockchain, but it gets stuck when trying to open the wallet itself. Should it take a long time and I just have to wait, or is there a problem and a way to fix it?

I just tested it by opening a 4 year old wallet: Bitcoin Core starts, and shows a window with "Rescanning..." at the bottom. It's now going through hundreds of GB of blockchain on my local disk to check transactions on all addresses inside that wallet. If yours shows the same, just wait. This can take a few hours depending on your system.

[Sauv84]

Agree with both posts above.

I too was restoring an old wallet and waited long enough.
Lucky that the old wallets were not encrypted at all and it was enough just to wait
But in the end I was rewarded with 3 btc