Fatal Error Help/Advice
First of all if you have not done it yet, I would encourage you to make a backup of the wallet.dat file (e.g. copy it a usb stick).

One solution would be to let bitcoin-qt show you the private key for the address for which you received bitcoins back in 2011. Then you could import (actually "sweep") them with Electrum. See the following help:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transferring_coins_from_Bitcoin-Qt_to_Electrum 

This should also work with version 0.8.5 and you don't need to wait for bitcoin-qt to have downloaded the blockchain or anything.