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Just started using Bitcoin today and since I needed them rather urgently, I hastily bought them and transferred them to my wallet before actually setting up my wallet. The client is downloading the blockchain but it’s taking painfully long… 3 hours and counting.
I was just wondering if I downloaded the blockchain from sourceforge without replacing the wallet.dat file will I get the coins I bought and transferred to said wallet?
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From what I know, yes. The wallet and the blockchain data exist independently from one another. The wallet file keeps track of all transactions relevant to itself that appeared in the blockchain, as well as information about the latest block it has seen. If you use an old wallet on a newer blockchain, the client should scan any blocks that came after the waller's last synchronisation and update the information accordingly.
If you need Bitcoins urgently, you might want to use an eWallet until your client synchronises. Those are ready to run in seconds.
You could be 24 to 48 hours away (or more even) from having the full blockchain operational.
The fastest way to be able to spend your funds is to export the private key and import it in another client, such as Blockchain.info/wallet. With the Bitcoin.org client v0.7 or higher, you can get a console using the Debug window. From the console you can perform the API commands to get the private key(s) for the transaction(s) with the funds enroute.
Another fast method is to use Blockchain.info/wallet's Desktop synch browser module which connects to your Bitcoin.org client and replicates all the keys from the wallet.dat into your Blockchain.info/wallet (and vice-versa).
