Mindboards

I am teaching robots at a middle school and we have 8-year-old LEGO Mindstorm kits with RCX 1.1 as the brain. Old, yes, but that's all we have. Our old laptop computers are having a problem always saving our programs (.vi). One day the file will be there, the next it is gone. Since the RCX bricks have the previous day's program on them, is there a way to transfer the program from the RCX to the computer so it can be loaded into the ROBOLAB software?

RCX programs on the brick have been compiled (tranlasted into a machine readable format) and there is no way to open them for further editing.
In what circumstances do the .vi's not appear?