Another one is an old Microsoft Outlook message file. It has a filename extension of PST. No one will touch it. Seems the only way to open it is with Microsoft Outlook, which I don't have. Oh, look, you can download a free trial of Microsoft Office. It's only 800MB. With FIOS (Fibre Optic Internet Service, or something like that) this is actually possible. Now to install. Start it up and it starts grinding away uncompressing files. Gets all that done and tells me I need Service Pack 2. Gee thanks. I've gotten along just fine for years without having to install any updates, and now, just to access this one stupid file, I have to install SP2. Bah.
Fine. Download it and start the installation. It starts grinding away and I go to bed. Get up in the morning, and has it completed? No, it has not. It has gotten hung up with the screensaver. Cycle the power.... disable the screensaver. Restart the installation, go eat breakfast.
To make a long story short, I spent all morning on it, but I finally did get all the messages from the PST file loaded into Outlook Express, which came with the computer, so the new Outlook can go away.
If I want to get the files into any other format I will have to save them individually. After looking through them, it does not appear that any of them contain any really useful information, but at least I can read them now.
Of course, now I am stuck with SP2, and who knows what kind of changes/problems/difficulties this is going to create. I suppose I could try and remove it, but that is another time consuming mission that is also fraught with risk. Someday I will start over on a new computer, or maybe just a clean disk. This computer is still (cross my fingers) working fine.
Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.
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