When you open the wallet, "help > debug window" will show the current number of blocks.
Which displays current number of blocks: 1242209, also when sync you can hover over the green tick bottom right
and see the amount of blocks you've downloaded. So be good if matches.
The only issue, with the old wallet is it has old nodes, which were replaced with dns seeder. But if it's working and
on the same chain should be fine.
I already did all that and the new QT refuses to open... the new wallet QT hangs as a grayed out box that says "Kryptcoin - Wallet (Not Responding) _ ◘ X"
If I do all the steps you mentioned but run the old QT instead of the new QT, the wallet opens fine, will connect and mints new coins, but I get the "WARNING: checkpoint too old" message... should I just ignore the warning? is there any way I can verify I'm on the correct blockchain and not a fork?