Once I am able to eventually find this file do I just us e a USB stick and move it to a more stable and update device ? that connects to the bitcoin core network or will I able to add that file to another wallet type
again thank you for responding
The bitcoin-core wallet format has changed since 2009 so I think the easier is to export the private keys using pywallet and import them into an Electrum wallet
You can also first export only the addresses to create an Electrum read-only wallet and then check the balances to export exclusively the couple of private keys you need
That would be safer as I guess the 2009 wallet isn't encrypted
Bitcoin Core have good backward compatibility, so IMO it won't hurt to dump Bitcoin Core using command
dumpwallet. Besides, his laptop is manufactured/bought in 2009, but he downloaded Bitcoin-qt in 2013 (the version should be between 0.8.0 - 0.8.6).