[ronsweet2]

Hello: Not sure if this is the best place to post this or not. I just bought a new PC and am trying to transfer all of my content from my old (10 year old!) PC to my new one. I have installed most of the programs into the new PC already. Right now, I am looking to transfer all of my data content from my old PC. This is probably about 60 GB of files, mostly video MPGs as well as Word and Excel documents.

The old PC is an AMC clone that is Windows 2000 based. The new PC is an Emachine EL1300G-02w that is Windows XP based. By clicking on "My Network Places" on the new PC, it seems that you are able to network the two PCs together and do it that way, but the first option calls for a USB flash drive which I don't have and have never used (I don't reslly have any accessories or "techie" equipment apart from a digital camera which I have not set up yet).* I do have an external DVD burner, but it will take awhile to burn DVDs of content 4.5 GB at a time to transfer from one PC to another. Does anyone know of a better or faster way to do this? I am a relative novice when it comes to doing this kind of stuff. Any help or advice is very much appreciated!! Ron

*I do have an old hub which is a D-link DSH-16 (100baseT) which I doubt will be of much use. If it's anything above and beyond plugging each PC in with computer ethernet cable (which I do have) it will probably be over my head anyway.

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Can't you just connect the old hard drive to the new machine and copy the files?

[JPCompHelp]

Can't you just connect the old hard drive to the new machine and copy the files?

[ronsweet2]

I thought of that, but when I opened up the side panel of the new PC, there does not appeasr to be a place to plug it in, unless you unplug something in there already and I really don't want to mess that up. The only external connections are for external drives of some sort. Is there a way around all that? Also, after I transfer the data, or perhaps instead of it, I would love to be able to "file share" between the two PCs if this was minimal add'l effort/cost.

Speaking of connections, I'm not even sure if I will be able to plug my printer into the new PC. I have an HP Laserjet 5P and it has those large male/female pins and there is no such port on the emachines PC. Is there some sort of adopter to work around that? Thanks, Ron

[JPCompHelp]

Is the hard drive a PATA or a SATA drive?
Use the Network Setup Wizard to configure your Windows network on both machines. Remember that they have to be in the same workgroup. To share a drive right click on it, go to Properties and in the Sharing tab click on the warning text. Do that on both machines and you should be able to transfer files between them.
If you don't have a proper port on the back of your computer, you should be able to get an LPT to USB cable in your computer shop.