BleepingComputer.com: Can Files Be Copied From Xp To Windows 98?

It's relatively simple to network the two computers using the router. The cable connection between two computers is just about the same thing, except that it lacks an internet connection. But there is one important difference:

YOU MUST have a crossover cable rather than a normal ethernet cable if you hook the two computers together. If you use the router, you use normal ethernet cables. The crossover cable switches some of the wires that receive to wires that send and vicey-verse.

As to the flash drive solution - you can get a short USB cable that you can plug into the back of the computer, then plug the flash drive into it. I use one that I got with a card reader. The older machine might likely have USB 1.1, which is 1/40th the speed of the newer USB 2.0. But it still works. I exchange files between all my computers with a flash drive. That's between machines using Windows XP, Windows 98, WIndows ME, and several versions of Linux.

Thanks Herk, I'll keep that in mind about the cables.

Hi Tek,

Did you ever get this working?

I still don't have my two pc's talking; even though they're set up through the router.

Herk, what's a crossover cable? Is that the one that connects the two machines together through a serial/parallel (sorry I don't know the difference) besides connecting them through the router?

Does the router only give them both access to the internet? I ran the wizard on xp, but the awful oem software just doesn't work like an xp disk. Sure wish i had one. M/S offers a backup copy of xp if you have an a: drive. I have seen my machine "use" an "a:" drive although it doesn't have a floppy disk drive nor is any drive named a:.

weird stuff. i'm trying to backup my data to my isp and send this piece o' junk back to e-machines/gateway. I put a flash drive in, and it blew away all the other usb port settings and lost my external dvd/rw drive. grrrr.

thanks y'all

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No, I haven't attempted to do it - I bought an external hard disk to back up to instead.... But I've bookmarked the info for future "fiddling".

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I think he was saying that the crossover cable is the cable you use when you just plug the two computers together, no router (the wires on one end of a normal ethernet cable won't be the right way around for a direct connection, so the ethernet cable goes ab at one end -> ab at the other end, but the crossover cable goes ab ->ba). (He'll hopefully be along to tell you the "real" answer )

Good luck with it.