Can I have help moving data from an old Windows 98 desktop PC to my new Windows 10 PC?

Anonymous

I've got this really old Gateway desktop PC that started life as a Windows 95 or earlier (I forget) that I'm wanting to get rid of. It's been sitting unused forever and I disconnected it from my home network years ago when I needed more places to plug stuff into my router since I have 2 Windows XP machines & 2 Windows 10 machines on it.

That old Gateway PC has a 3-1/2" floppy drive that I don't have any discs for and never will, along with a CD drive, a DVD drive and I just discovered that it even has 2 USB ports on the back that I never knew existed.

I've tried endlessly to save the 500mb of Photos and Docs on it onto either a CD or DVD but from all I can tell, they both must be broken or at least maybe the formatting of the discs that I do in a drive on my Windows 10 DELL isn't correct.

Heck, during the formatting process, I even thought that since I'm wanting to use the CD in that old beast Gateway thing, I should set the File System setting from UDF 2.01 (Default) to UDF 1.50, thinking I should use the oldest one it had.

Nothing has worked and I've tried reformatting & Copy/Pasting a bunch of times.

Oddly, it will seem like it is writing to a CD and it shows it stepping thru the Videos, Photos and Docs, but I'll always keep hearing the drive's motor start & stop every 5 or 10 seconds & then if I wait long enough, it does finally show all of the files.

But it's totally weird that if I put another blank CD in that same drive, it shows as if all those same files are on it too.

Weird. That must be some flaw in that old Windows 98 Operating System I guess.

I'd at first tried sticking a USB adapter with a flash card in, thinking that would be super quick. But, it wasn't recognized and something told me that it needed a driver, which isn't possible to get on that PC since it isn't connected anymore to the internet.

So, sorry about all this talk but after spending countless hours, I've concluded that it might be best & easiest to just bring that old PC into my home office & park it next to this Windows 10 DELL Inspirion, hook them together somehow directly with a USB cable instead of thru the router, and then maybe I could just access the old PC's drive and Copy my data off of it.

After all, then I can either burn it onto a tiny flash card or just let it stay on my D: hard drive on this where all of my data is. My C: with Windows & my programs is an SSD to make it super fast.

So, I've rambled on but I do need some basic help in knowing that the old hard drive will be able to be accessed by my new PC if I just connect them with a USB cable or will I need to have a keyboard, mouse and monitor on the old PC too?

I've put this in Windows > Windows 10 > Files, Folders & Storage but if an Admin thinks it should somewhere else, please feel free to move it. Thanks for any help. :-)

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Anonymous

Did you chose the correct USB drivers for your edition of Win 98?

http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php

You stated earlier that the USB driver that you chose (downloaded) is nusb33e.exe. This is for Windows 98SE (Second Edition).

If this is the correct selection for your edition of Win 98 did you follow the installation instructions (found on the download page)?

http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/win98se-usb-mass-storage-drivers.php

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Anonymous

First of all, what drive on the device is the drive letter E: associated with?

Why did you do both at the same time (one at a time is best practice, especially on and old outdated OS that is no longer supported (nor able to be updated past were it was when you stopped using it or updating it when updates were still available)).

At this point try shutting down then unplug the CD drive and the thumb drive then startup the device, then do a restart and give it 10 or fifteen minutes to stabilize, then plugin one of the (either the CD drive or the thumb drive, your choice) peripherals then let me know what happens. What do you then see in My Computer, System properties (Device Manager?) etc..

Let me know.

-Richard

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82 additional answers

Anonymous

2019-05-05T03:26:04+00:00

I'm not sure how deep I should go into telling you all that I've tried with CDs and now DVDs. I've pretty much given up on getting either to work. The CD is a Writer but the DVD is just a Reader.

I actually burned the USB drive driver onto a DVD using the drive in my Windows 10 but the Windows 98 can't read it for some reason.

I think I should just give up on both the CD and DVD drives.

Shouldn't I be able to access data on the Windows 98 machine thru the router if I can figure out how to add it into our home network?

I did read a scary site saying that anything earlier than Windows Vista is so vulnerable to attack that you should NEVER have it in a network that has internet access.

So, maybe I could just disconnect the internet and network the 2 machines temporarily so that I can grab the data?

Here's where I just read that: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/file-share-between-windows-10-and-windows-98se/125001/7
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Anonymous

2019-05-05T02:30:14+00:00

Richard, I just had a little brainstorm. What if I were to get that USB drive driver using my Windows 10 pc and burn it onto a DVD, which I have some new ones of that I'll probably never use, and then have the Found New Hardware wizard on the Windows 98 pc use that when I shove the thumb drive in?

I would have gone there long ago but in your initial question posting it sounded as though you were saying that the CD and DVD drives on the Win 98 PC were not working? After reading it again it occurs to me that perhaps you had built the CD file but had not then performed the burn to disc operation?

Which type of writable discs are you using (there are several different types, some burner drives can only work with certain types).

What burning software are you using?

Is the CD (and or) DVD drive on that old machine actually a reader/writer or just read only?

Can you put a standard CD (or DVD) disc in the drive and read/view it's contents?

-Richard
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Anonymous

2019-05-05T02:15:54+00:00

Sorry, I hadn't mentioned that I'd tried that one already too. But I just did again and it FAILED again, saying Page Status: Failed - could not open " "

I know I mentioned that Off By One will get to www.technical-assistance.co.uk so how about I go there and get the USB drive driver that you'd told me I should try at that site, even though Off By One won't go to the exact link that I listed in my last Reply that you'd told me to get it on that site at?

Ok,

I've downloaded the Off by One browser and used it in Win 98 compatibility mode to test it out. What I found is that it's SSL support is too outdated to fully open the present day HTTPS sites, however, it works well with HTTP sites.

Now, the USB driver site is HTTP and I was able to download the drivers from it using the Off by One browser, here are some screenshots:

This is the "http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php" page.

After deciding which one of the 2 downloads that you need (I chose one at random) click on the link for it, that should take you to the next page.

Now click the download link on that page and it should go to the next page. On this page click on the "Save file as" selection.

The downloaded file should now be found in the same folder that the Off by One browser files reside in.

Presumably this could/should work for you too on the Win 98 PC.

-Richard
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