I had my old 2003 Windows laptop recovered by the Microsoft Store last year (all my files and documents), and some of the more important items on there were old movie project files that I edited on Windows Movie Maker (they have the extension .mswmm). I was told by the Microsoft Store that I would be able to open these files on Windows Movie Maker downloaded through Windows Live Essentials, but right when I got to downloading Live Essentials, Microsoft discontinued the download rather inconveniently.

I found a workaround by finding a download of Windows Live Essentials elsewhere, but when I try to open my .mswmm documents, it gives me all kinds of errors and will not open the files. I even downloaded a different, earlier version of Movie Maker to see if it would fix the problem, but it doesn't. The folder where my .mswmm files live also has all of the source video files, both WMV exports and AVI capture video files - there is absolutely no missing media.

When I try to open any of the project files on the Windows Live Essentials program, it says "Sorry, Movie Maker can't open the is project file. The file might not be compatible with Movie Maker or be corrupted. Please select a different project file." When I tried to open the project files with the older version of Movie Maker, it says, "The collections file is not valid or is corrupted. A new empty collections file has been created," followed by "Invalid Pointer." I was able to get rid of the "collections file" error by following the instructions from another forum and deleting the MEDIATAB folder in my AppData folder. But what I can't seem to get past is the "Invalid Pointer" error.

When I took this problem to the Microsoft Store here in Austin, they weren't very helpful. I met with someone who was late for his lunch break and antsy, and he quickly said he thought it must be that my .mswmm file was corrupted. But I really don't think it's that simple. They weren't able to provide me with another computer with Movie Maker installed to test my file, just as a test to make sure it's not my software, so I'm at a loss. These files were restored perfectly and, like I said, all of the original media is there. I don't know exactly what version of Movie Maker I was using, but these files were edited in early and mid 2006, so it was likely an early version. Can someone help me? Is there a place where I can find earlier versions of Movie Maker, or any kind of workaround?

Thank you so much.