About 6 years ago, I went to the Bitcoin.org website and downloaded their wallet onto my old computer.
Bitcoin.org offers you different wallets based on user's preferences. This site doesn't have "his" wallet, it showcases different but more or less reputable wallets.
As part of the installation process, I had to enter a 12-word phrase.
OK, fine, so you chose a HD wallet which uses mnemonic recovery words as wallet backup.
... although I got technical help, it has proved impossible to retrieve the wallet.dat file from that computer. I understand however, that it is possible to download an Electrum wallet (which I have done) and use the 12-word phrase when during the installation process (which I have also done).
If you downloaded Electrum, then there is no wallet.dat file to be found. Your wallet file has a different name, you can look up its location based on the OS you used (you didn't say about that so far, if I remember correctly). I use Electrum with Linux and wallet files are saved normally in ~/.electrum/wallets directory.
But, I have not been able to get the new wallet to synchronize. I'm told this is a common problem> I'm need some guidance as to how to troubleshoot this problem.
Which version of Electrum do you use?
There is a colored circle in the lower right corner: which color does it show?
Click on the colored circle in the lower right corner and post a screenshot of what you seen in the Network Overview tab.
(You can upload your screenshot to https://talkimg.com/ and insert the [img]link-to-picture[/img] enclosed in [img]-tags.)
If you want to download the most recent version of Electrum, do this only from the official Electrum size which is https://www.electrum.org/ and never forget to verify your downloaded wallet package is genuine (the site provides instructions how to do it properly).
