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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Answer accepted by question author

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

2019-05-05T05:52:55+00:00

Richard, I finally figured out to click on a little button labeled URL way up in the upper-left of the Off-By-One browser but it won't let me go to any sites that I type into it.

I can’t access OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or any site using Off-By-One, even Facebook.

So, maybe we should just forget about Off-By-One for now and I should just get another browser. Do you have any other suggestions? I bet you gave me some and I can't remember if you did or even find them while digging here.

Oh, I try to do all of my work of Replying on my computer in the browser and only rarely will I let myself Reply using my Windows phone.

But, that Off-By-One browser will take me to http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk when I clicked a link in the page it showed that denied the existence of the driver site you suggested at

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

I'd thought that maybe I could do a Search on that page, but the site also FAILS like all of the others do if I click their Search link or anything else on the page.

It also won't go to that other driver download site at

https://download.cnet.com/usb2-0-driver-for-win98-exe/3000-18493_4-151166.html

.

I apologize if this is old stuff but I left this one open a few hours in EDIT mode and had made a few changes on it, so I guess I'll just hit SUBMIT.

Thanks for helping me so much. I'm such a bozo. :-(
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Anonymous

2019-05-05T05:56:48+00:00

If your XP machines are presently on your network you're already in that scary boat.

Should I immediately unplug the one XP machine that my son uses pretty often? It's really only hooked to the router to give it the internet. Couldn't I just remove it from our Davis-home network?

He uses wireless or moves a cable to use the printer/scanner.
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Anonymous

2019-05-05T06:16:25+00:00

I've got to say first, thanks for all of this help. I really appreciate it. I'm not sure why I deserve it all & I feel lucky that we were connected.

I didn't get too far. Your first step says:

"Ok,

…..

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."

The problem is, even though it did, for the first time ever, seem to be trying to download it for a minute or so saying Status: Connecting with a swirling mouse and the odd colored tile icon in the upper right changing colors, it must have finally timed out or something and it popped that familiar Status: Failed - could not connect to "www.technical-assistance.co.uk".

Under that, it only has a DISMISS PAGE and a TRY AGAIN. So, I gave it a few tries, hoping that maybe it had loaded something into cache memory and it only needed to get the rest, but no luck on that silliness.

Each time, it did that same "Status: Connecting with a swirling mouse and the odd colored tile icon in the upper right changing colors" and then it FAILED.

I'm not sure why you've been able to get it to work in Win 98 compatibility mode and yet my actual Win 98 machine won't do it.
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