Another way to go about this transfer is to go to a place that does this. There are places (here at least) that will transfer your files from one computer to another. They use a parallel port lap link to connect the old computer to the new one and run a program to link both computers as if on a peer to peer network, then manually transfer directory trees as if these were shared file systems.
It is very crude. You have to manually go over your new computer directories and put the transferred directories and files in where you want them later.
You can probably buy this transfer system and set it up yourself. Look around for `lap link' `file transfer' and other categories on google.
I agree with Dwayne. You don't want to swap in an old hard drive. You can't just make it a secondary drive either because it has a master boot record on the first track that will interfere with the boot process.
One method which is very tricky to get right is to put the old drive in the new computer and boot off a floppy with command.com and fdisk on it.
(First boot the old computer and read the BIOS entry for this drive on tracks and sectors and write it all down. Physically check the entries on the top of the drive also).
Turn off the old computer and take out the drive. But the drive in the new computer.
Make sure your floppy has the system files and fdisk from the same windows version as the new computer. Boot the new computer off a system floppy. Open fdisk and figure out how to re-write the master book record on this old drive so it is not bootable. Leave partitioning alone. You just want to uncheck the make bootable', that is make the drive `unbootable'.
Reboot the new computer and get to the BIOS before windows starts. Then go to the BIOS and look for the old drive as a secondary drive, a slave. Hopefully your BIOS is smart enough to just read the track and sector info off the drive and accept them. If the BIOS doesn't, then enter the values from the old drive and select is as something like `d:' drive.
Now try reboot. From the new drive with the new windows OS running... The new hardware' menus should appear. See if you can follow the set up to make the old drive appear listed as something like drive d:. If you can get this far, then you can copy files off of it, without dealing with the old windows OS--since it theoretically never booted.
I've done this on a Win95 dual install with FreeBSD on separate drives. The key is to erase the master boot record, without destroying the fat tables and partition scheme. It also depends on whether the new WinXX will recognize the old drive. I have no idea what msuck does these days. This was something I did about three or four years ago.
Use any of this with extreme caution...
CG