Quote from: praxe on December 29, 2016, 03:35:26 PM

If I have a wallet.dat file, what is the easiest and most effective way to recover it?

Their is two of recovering the wallet , one if you are using blockchain then you have to download the software and copy and paste the old wallet.dat file in the app folder and then you have to run the sofwate and it will sync fully after wards you will be able to see your address and the bitcoin stored in the wallet. this may take time for sync

if you are using electrum or other wallet then it is the same precedure but it will be soon as this wallet dont need lot of data to sync and even through passphrase also you can rebuild your old wallet.