"tried to transfer coins to bittrex but my wallet was out of date and so they never showed up"
I'm making some assumptions here so please be kind:
No i haven't tried loading the wallet up on a new client yet because i was afraid as soon as i did it would try to make the transfer. I don't know if it would or not and was just curious if it would. I'll have to see if i can get that account back i know i had a bunch of alts back in the day just sitting on it.
Its either there or its not , if you load the old wallet.dat file in the new client it will not transfer anything with out you confirming the transaction. do you have the address ? the block explorer will tell you.