I mean I thought I knew exactly what had happened. The main hard drive had died. So I went out and bought a new drive, a much bigger one. I rushed home and snapped the old drive out and plugged in the new one. Being smart and male wasn't enough.
Normal people take things back.
So I had to improvise. I am impressed at how well the replacements perform. To fill in for Microsoft Word 97, I am using WordPad, the word processor that comes free with Windows 95 and Windows 98. The Win 98 version of WordPad can open Word 97 documents, although it can't save them in the same format. Because WordPad doesn't have a built-in spelling checker, I got on the Web and grabbed Cetus WordPad, a free replacement for WordPad with a nifty spelling checker included.