Phone died, WhatsApp is still on my Computer. How can I restore my profile?

Hi All,

New to this forum and hoping someone is savvy to a solution to my problem. Here are hopefully all the details that are needed.

My phone died 3 months ago. It's a BRICK. I'm thinking of paying $300 to have all data recovered from the main chip. But I hadn't performed a WhatsApp (WA) backup in a very long time so I don't know if there's any value in recovering the raw files. (Okay, I've learned my lesson.)

Thankfully I did copy my WA folders/files on June 7 '20 to my PC. But it's not the same as having my complete WA profile on my new phone. And it's missing a little over a month's worth of pics which, for what it's worth, are "encrypted" by WA on my PC.

I still have the SIM card with the dead phone. But my new phone required a new SIM card.

The dead phone is a Samsung Galaxy S6 and doesn't have a removable MicroSD card slot.

A close friend still has WA on her phone (with our pics and conversations) and she doesn't use a PC. I can walk her through the backup process if that'll help me to somehow recover my profile though I'm sure it's device-specific and won't help. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

But I still have WA on my PC. The primary folders seem to be AppData\Local and AppData\Roaming. Granted, these are not backups but I copied them to different folders in case I screw up the originals.

When I started WA on my PC, it no longer let me access anything. It just prompted me with the QR code. When I paired it with my new phone, all went well. Except there are no chats. Just my contacts. Yet, my previous Windows WA folders/files are still on my PC's hard drive.

Is there an app that will convert raw Windows WA folders/files to a legitimate backup that can be used to restore WA on my new phone? (I Googled it but didn't find one.)

Again, will my close friend's backup help me to somehow recover my profile?

I think that covers everything. I would like to think this is do-able but I have no idea how to make it happen. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Paul