Starting up my late grandfather's 25 year old computer

There is a treasure trove of important family information on this forgotten hard drive from the 1990s! But will it run?

First, a little background! Before my grandfather (mother's side) died in 2008, he wrote his memoirs on this old Dell PC. It went unused for years, and was eventually replaced altogether. When my grandmother died in 2016, I wasn't able to find anywhere in the Vancouver area to rent, but I dragged the discarded old machine around with me, even when I was homeless. It was in storage units, it was in dingy basements, and it even fell off the back of a bus one time! I had no idea if it was even still working, but just in case, I kept it through some pretty rough times. When my life settled down a bit in 2019, my wife surprised us both by conceiving, and we moved away from Vancouver. The old tower made the cut, and ended up on the moving truck.

After another baby, and then another move (this one extremely traumatic), I ended up in a small Northern Canadian town, far away from everybody I've ever known, with unexplained serious health problems. I don't drive. My wife is disabled and can't drive. But I've become interested in genealogy (the study of family history), and discovered I'm quite talented at it. After almost 4 years, I've accurately researched and documented my grandfather's side extensively, even solving some perplexing mysteries that have stumped other researchers for decades. Most discoveries in genealogy nowadays are made online, by searching indexed old documents, but information can also come directly from living family members, or family heirlooms left behind.

One major part of my grandfather's family tree yet to be revealed is the origin of his father's father (James Bradford Powell). In other words, my family doesn't know where our name comes from.

Thinking back to the early 2000s, I remember Grampa sitting at that computer, clacking away at the big black keyboard. Whenever I asked him what he was doing, he would say he was writing memoirs for us to read when he's gone. But for one reason or another, I've never seen a printed finished copy of those memoirs. I know it exists, but I can't get my hands on it. It's frustrating, because I know it contains information I was meant to have. Information that would really help me in my research, and also help me understand where I came from genetically and culturally.

I recently got thinking. Is there any way that old hard drive is still viable? And if so, is there any data left on it that could help unlock this family mystery?

As my health mysteriously deteriorates, I find myself putting a lot of time into being with my wife and young children. When I get a minute to myself, it usually goes toward family research. Recently, with some more bad news regarding my heart, I've decided to push toward my goal, and use every means possible to achieve it. I would love to pass along a completed family tree to my children, not to mention the stories, culture, and meaning that goes along with all that research.

So, I decided it was time to try running the old machine.

Knowing it could be quite dirty, or even damaged, I opened it up. Good news! It looked intact, and was rather clean. After a bit of dust was removed, I put things back together. I also found the old Dell keyboard, and a monitor that could be adapted for use. I had never tried starting a computer anywhere this old before! It was a quarter century old, and hadn't been run in at least a decade! I knew that there was a chance that even if it started up, it might only do so a single time. I was prepared for anything as I plugged in the power cord, and hit the "ON" button.

A relieved, thrilled, and amused laugh was heard throughout my house as the screen lit up:

Windows XP! Hahaha, I haven't seen that operating system in a very long time! What memories : ))

Aside from the Bios being outdated (and the internal clock having reset itself after so long without power), it ran smoothly, and Windows started properly. I was looking at my grandfather's old desktop as he had left it in 2008! I quickly pulled up files, knowing my time could be limited. My priority was to gather useful information in a hurry, without doing anything that might cause its permanent loss.

Someone (maybe even myself, long ago) had done some cleanup of the files since he had passed away. It would have been nice if the entire thing had been totally preserved since the moment he last switched it off to go outside to his garden, but at least it was working, and hadn't been wiped clean.

I started thinking about using an "undelete" program to recover anything that could be interesting, but don't have any experience with that, so I'm putting it off for now.

The email program was mostly empty, although the contact list was still there. Not a lot of pictures to be found. Some jokes, some puzzles, some games. It's very... him. I miss him a lot. I'm thankful for this moment, being close to him again, in a way, one more time. That was worth hauling this thing around for so many years, all by itself!

But that's when I found the big treasure.

Tucked into a nested directory, forgotten away since 2003 (early in his family research), was a simple file named genealogy1.

My heart skipped a beat. Well, it skips a lot of beats lately, and does a lot of unnecessary ones as well. But what I mean is, I got butterflies in my stomach. My mouth went dry. The hair stood up on the backs of my arms. This was it! What was in this 20+ year old text document? What had I exerted, paid, and sacrificed so much for? Would it contain lost family knowledge not available anywhere else, that I've been seeking for so long?

The full answer will come in a future post. But the short answer is... Yes.

And that's not even the last of it, because I've only skimmed over about half the available contents. The computer itself is holding up well. I haven't connected it to the internet, but it doesn't seem to mind. I will be going through it whenever my home situation and health allows.

Thank you, Gramps! You left me something more significant than anything else could have been. As I said to you just before you died: I'm proud to be your grandson, and I promise to carry our family on through my children. I might be coming to see you and Grama soon, but for now I'll be using the info you left me - and your puzzle-solving skills I inherited - to find out where we came from and share it with those still here.

There's no guarantee the old machine would have been functional if left another 5 years, or even another month. They don't last forever. Neither do people, and people contain a LOT of good information in their brains. When they're gone, it's gone for good. It's best to get at that data while we still can. If you're planning to get into family history at some point, don't keep putting it off. It's never too late to start, but once you do, you will regret any delay. If you'd like some help getting started, just let me know and I'll be happy to help.

DRutter