Realistically though if the OP has been using his/her PC for a while that's probably not an option. But once it's back online, loading Windows 7 into a partition on the harddrive and setting up a dual-boot option might be helpful for using the functions Windows 8 is no longer good at, like listing recently opened files. Turns out there's a workaround for that, and for other handy features that vanished from Windows 8, so it's probably not necessary in the long run. (The workaround is to click the "recent" folder under Users/xxxx.)
On the other hand, neither Windows 7 or 8 will run WordPerfect 5.1 (7 runs it in a tiny window, ditto virtual XP, a waste of space imho), so setting up an XP partition and actually getting it to boot would IMHO be worth the effort. Unfortunately, it's also a huge pain in the ass, and so far I haven't been able to get the XP partition I made on the Windows 8 desktop I bought last summer to boot. Oh well. 
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