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Bored. Digging around My Documents. The reason some of those files are dated 2000 is they take on the year you transferred them between drives, so actually some of them are older than 2000.

Like patters and forms, campaign ideas (I have a 19 year old mechanoid campaign I never actually ran) and some artwork and stuff from amateur's, posted on the web once 20 plus years ago, and I still have them. I bet the guys who made it are long gone now. Probably quit the game.

I have a folder of files that date back at least that far. A few Phase World campaing notes, downloads of conversions for scifi fighters and ships to PW stats. When I moved files to this computer I found a few Heroes Unlimited characters from 1998 done in MS Works. Some files are so old I can't even open them in any usable format.

It is amazing how much stuff piles up on your drive and how impossible it is to clean.

I've seen online file converters. You may be able to get them back.
But yes, Works was never that great. Just a mess and even worse that they insisted on using special file formats.

I recently finished up rounding up all my files and doing maintenance (ie get rid of stuff I don't want/need anymore), and found stuff that is ~26years old on 3.5" floppy disks (still have a working drive) and a few Omega ZipDisks (working portable drive, it uses parallel port though, which I still had). I also have 5.25" disks, though I know nothing is on them (and I don't have a disk drive for them).


The Opensource LibreOffice Suite can open MS Works files, at least the Word and Excel equivalents can. MS Works Database is likely out of the question using LibreOffice (I could be wrong). MS Office might also be another option, but I can't say for sure due to age of my version (there is also the Web Version of MS Office, but I haven't used that one).

If you still have the Install Disk(s) for MS Works it might still work with Modern Windows, at least enough to open the files and either C&P into a new document or re-save them in another format. A Virtual Machine install of Windows XP might also work if you have the necessary Disks/ISO (WinXP and MS Works), an earlier version of Windows (95/98) might be possible but is something I haven't done with VMs (some people have gotten them up and running I've read). Though I would go with LibreOffice or a New Install Instance before the VM route (disk space and complexity).

I'm not programing savvy enough to know which of thos are safe so I really didn't bother. Anf yes Works was the worst. I only used it with my first computer, and old deskttop my mother got me through her job, and that only lasted 6 or 7 years. Once I started working I switched most things over to office and back then it was actually easy to convert, I just missed a sub-folder or 3.

I cheated when I found them. I opened them as a text file, copied the now incredibly messed up contents, and pasted it into a new word file. I figured if I haven't looked at those files in almost 25 years I probably didn't need them but I kind of wanted to hold on to the info. For me that is what passes for nostalgia

If you need it: setup legal, free Windows XP machine

I've done it a few times. Granted I'm a developer and deal with VMs and such everyday, but the walk through should be easy enough to follow.

I may need that. I loved Tiger Woods PGA tour 2004 but it wont run on Windows 10.

Unfortunately, VMs really aren't made for gaming. I am not saying it can't be done, but when I tried to do it years ago it wasn't the best experience, I really haven't tried it since so it is possible improvements have been made since then. I would suggest doing research to see if the game(s) you want to run in a WinXP VM environment will work and how well.

Alternatively, have you tried setting properties to have the program run in an earlier version of Windows mode? Right-Click, select properties which brings up a dialog box, select Compatibility Tab. Put a tick in the Combability Mode box and then select a version of Windows (can go back to Windows 95). You might also need to select the tick box for Run Program as Administrator. You might also be able to get away with just Run as Admin tick selected. Though if the problem is from DRM tools, this likely won't work and you'd need to go either VM or on metal Linux install (not a VM) with WINE Tool (no guarantee it can run a Windows program/game though, or how flawlessly).

I do the same thing for an old Star Wars Software Suite that a guy designed for the Revised D20 Rules back in the early 2000's. I still run it on Windows 11 to this day. I have to set the install to run in Compatibility Mode and then I have to go to each EXE file for the different programs in the suite and tell them to run in Compatibility Mode as well. Plus adding a few supporting OCX files to the System dir in Windows. It seems like a lot of work but totally worth it to have access to those programs.

I also have some old files for RIFTS and Robotech that I still use to this day. One is the Excel Character Sheet that I found many years ago. I have made several changes to it over the years to make it compatible with the RUE and still need to work on a few other things but it is still an excellent sheet to use for my needs.