Hi Bernadine,
The fact that your "Windows 98" computer has a physical USB port doesn't tell the whole story. There are two versions of Windows 98: 98 and 98SE. Your ability to use USB will vary depending whether you have 98 or 98SE. To oversimplify, I believe 98 does not support USB and 98SE does, but may need to be tweaked.
There are two types of USB: Ver 1.1 and Ver 2.0. Ver 1.1 is much slower than 2.2 and is of limited use for transferring large files. Some USB devices are 1.1 and some are 2.0. Some support Win 98 and others support only XP and above. As a last resort to get USB 2.2 on a computer, you can add a PCI card like this:
http://www.usbwholesale.com/usbman%20special.htm
You may be able to do things which will better enable your 98 machine to use USB devices. Here is a web site which may get you started with that.
http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php
1. (If you ARE able to get USB 2.2 working on the 98 machine,) you could buy and use an external USB hard drive for the transfer. The external USB hard drive could be very useful in the future, as you could connect it to almost any computer. It would work like a pen drive but larger. It would have to be formatted using the Fat32 (not NTFS) file system to be useable with the Win 98 and XP computer. Your 98 computer is probably Fat32 file system, your XP probably NTFS. The newer NTFS can "see" the older Fat32, but not vice versa.
2. (If you ARE able to get USB 2.2 working on the 98 machine,) you could use a USB link cable (sometimes referred to as a bridge cable) to connect the two machines by wire. I have two USB link cables. One supports 98 and XP. The other supports XP and Vista. It would be nice to have one that supported 98, XP, and Vista.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16800996012
3. Or (IMHO THE SIMPLEST INEXPENSIVE SOLUTION) you could get a USB hard drive adapter. Attach it to any drive and plug the other end into a USB port. I have this Bytecc unit. It is easy and inexpensive. It comes with two parts: the adapter, and the power supply. The power supply is not needed for 2.5" drives. I see that some people have had trouble with the power supply, but mine has been fine. You may need to install it's software on the computer you connect to. I use it with Fat32, NTFS, 2.5", and 3.5" drives plugged into a USB 2.2 jack. It is a temporary setup, but works like a charm.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156101
4. Or you could put the hard drive from the 98 computer in an external 3.5" USB case and connect it to your XP computer. This is the same setup as Solution 1, using your own hard drive, and a more permanent version of Solution 3 above. You can find many USB cases here:
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=92&name=External-Enclosures
5. Or you could put the hard drive from the "98" computer inside your XP computer as a second hard drive. That is a very good, more permanent option and has already been very well explained.
HTH, Bob
>>Bernadine wrote:
>> The Win 98 machine does have a USB slot. A friend, who knows a lot about
>> computers came over and tried 2 of his flash drives in the old computer
>> and neither worked. He did go to the website and installed drivers but
>> nothing he did would get that old computer to run either of the flash
>> drives. He's no longer able to help me so I'm stuck. Thanks, Bernadine
>>> Jeff Long wrote:
>>> If the Win 98 machine has a USB slot you can do this but will have to get
>>> drivers for the Win 98 machine before the flash drive will work. My
>>> flash drive is a Sony and I went to their website to get the drivers; I
>>> just followed the instructions that came with the drive. Jeff Long
>>> ------Original Message------
>>> From: Bernadine
>>> Subject: [PCBUILD] Transfer files from one computer to another
>>> .... I have an old computer this XP and an older yet computer Win 98, no idea
>>> what's on it anymore.
>>> The Win98 computer will not work with a flash drive. I have quite a few
>>> files and folders I would like to transfer from the Win98 to the XP and
>>> unless I use hundreds of floppy disks I can't do that. Is there a way to
>>> transfer files more easily and not cost me an arm and a leg? Can the old
>>> hard drive be linked to the newer computer? How? If not can the old hard
>>> drive be taken out and added to the newer computer? How? I'm not very
>>> good at understanding most of the answers you write to others, so could
>>> you please explain in easy terms. Thank you, Bernadine
>>> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
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