Recently, I rebuilt my computer and decided to move from WinXP Pro to Win 7 Pro. Since a 32-bit system can access only a limited amount of RAM, I installed Win 7 Pro 64-bit. Before my final WinXP ShutDown, I made a complete backup of both my hard drives and saved the backups on an external hard drive. After the new installation was complete, I attempted to reinstall Microsoft’s Cardfile. Cardfile (16-bit) was included on several Microsoft Windows systems and I found this simple program extremely convenient to act as a virtual “Rolodex” and I had many customers and contacts stored in a cardfile.crd file. Unfortunately, 16-bit programs do not operate in 64-bit systems and even the Compatability Troubleshooter did not permit it to install. I remembered that MS NT Ver. 3.51 included Cardfile and when I checked its properties, I found that the Cardfile program in 3.51 is 32-bit. There are four files that must be extracted from the NT disk(s), cardfile.cn_, cardfile.ex_, cardfile.hl_, and cards.dl_. These four files are MS compacted files and must “extracted” before they are useful. In this case, “extracted” means decompressed. There is a freeware program, 7-Zip, that is readily available on the web and it will decompress MS compacted files in addition to many other compressed files such as ZIP, RAR, etc.
Make a folder on the boot drive, probably the “C:\” drive, named CardFile and extract these four files into that folder. It is absolutely necessary to put this Cardfile folder on the boot drive since if it is operated on a different drive, the desktop no longer responds after Cardfile is exited. This is because this procedure does not include an installation file “msi”, however, the program will operate in Win 7 64-bit and can be used to store names, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
After the four files are in the Cardfile folder, use Explorer to open the folder and see that third character has been restored to the file extension. There will be four files, cardfile.exe, cardfile.cnt, cardfile.hlp, and cards.dll. Right Click on cardfile.exe and when the menu opens, click on Create shortcut. A Shortcut will created in the Cardfile folder. Right click the shortcut and when the menu opens, left Properties. Under the Shortcut Tab, look in Target text bar and see the text “C:\cardfile\cardfile.exe”. Place cursor just after the “exe” and delete “exe” with the Backspace key and then “crd”.
If you have your original cardfile.crd file which has all the personal data, copy the cardfile.crd file and paste it into the new Cardfile folder. Now copy the modified shortcut and paste it on the desktop.
