The most straightforward way to recover your funds is to use the official Bitcoin Core Backup first : Make a copy of your wallet.dat
Creating a "hot" wallet (a wallet connected to the internet) from an is a high-risk move. If that file is from the early days of Bitcoin or contains significant funds, you could expose your assets to malware, keyloggers, or clipboard hijackers the moment you connect to the network. old walletdat hot
Once you have the private keys: