Found my old wallet.dat

Hey all! So I just stumbled upon my old wallet.dat from Bitcoin Core, dating back to 2012. I can't recall the exact password, but I have a hunch about what it might be. Is there any way to get the password back? Thanks a bunch!

Let me be the first: I've seen many more posts from people who bought a (fake) wallet, than from people who have an actual 13 year old wallet they created on their own. So to safe time: did you download or buy this wallet? If so: you're wasting your time, there is no funded private key in there.

LoyceV is, as usual, exactly correct. In case your post is genuine and you are telling the truth I will quote below the answer I gave some time ago to another user with your same identical issue

I didn't buy or download, it's my personal wallet, I got the BTC thanks to mining.

We hear this a LOT around here.  It's almost always a lie. If this actually is your wallet, then you just need to install Bitcoin Core, drop a COPY of the wallet.dat in the data directory, and then start up Bitcoin Core. Try sending a test transaction, and enter the password when prompted.  That's it.  You've recovered your wallet. If you don't know the password, you're going to need to remember it.  There isn't going to be any way to recover that wallet without the password. This is all pretty simple, and 5 minutes on Google (or whatever your favorite search engine is) should have already gotten you that information.  Furthermore, anyone with enough technical understanding to have been mining in 2012 wouldn't generally need to ask such questions here.  Both of those facts make it more likely that you have either already been scammed or are a scammer and are hoping to use this discussion to lure in a victim. There must be an interesting story about how you discovered Bitcoin, how you got started mining, when and why you quit mining, how you lost the wallet.dat, how you found it, what makes you so sure this is the same one that you lost, and what you've been doing in the meantime. I'd love to hear all the details. Were you active here on bitcointalk back then under a different userID?

if you need help, send me a pm and tell me your story we can try to recover them, clearly my feedbacks and my trusts speak for me Obviously there is a whole procedure, but first tell me your story and I'll tell you if I can help you or not see you, remember stay quiet and care

You are absolutely right! In fact before bitcoin didn't tell me anything, it's thanks to a friend that I gave myself to mining, I did it and I abandoned my wallet, when I saw the rise of bitcoin I remembered that I do mining but the error that I didn't memorize my password otherwise my wallet is real and for me. It’s okay !  I sent you pm

you have to do some extra memory work, to make you understand, things that can help you recover - remember more or less how long the password was - remember if there are any numbers, special characters and other things - remember if it was a complete sentence or random letters, lowercase, uppercase, etc. with this information an algorithm is trained that tries Do you have an address that proves there are bitcoins inside?

I have all the information you mentioned

If this is genuine (which I doubt) then this guy is your best bet if you don’t know the passphrase - https://www.walletrecoveryservices.com/ Obviously he takes a fee.