The Bitqoin program bitcoin-qt runs ok and obviusly finds the wallet. opening the wallet shows data that is unreadable. Running bitcoin-qt is no problem. Is there a program I can use that can show me the content of the wallet?
Answering bob question could give us better information and probably an answer to your question above.
Also, are you sure that this wallet is from core ?
Core's wallet files usually have an extension (wallet.dat). Electrum on the other hand doesn't have any extension (e.g. default_wallet).
Try to open it with Electrum if you're unsure. If that failed too, then use wallet recovery program. If that also failed, the chance is your "wallet" file is way too corrupted.