Slow PC, need files on Mac

[macmacattack]

I posted this on another mac-related forum, and then I realized that it is a ghost town :| Just warning you in case you google this; I don't want you to think I've been spamming up the internet or something! & I hope this is in the right section; I feel quite stupid because of all of the more advanced questions on here.


I have a 2004 Compaq Presario (SR1020NX). It is running Windows XP. It was my first computer & my only computer until last year when I got a Macbook (Running version 10.6.8 if that's important). I now want to get my files off of it and on to ANYTHING, maybe my Macbook. (The external hard drive I made when I got my Macbook got corrupted... fun. My own stupidity.) There are many problems with this endeavor.

1) To my knowledge, I have no cable to connect the two.
2) I do not know what kind of cables one would recommend if I need to connect the two. But don't worry about answering this question; I can research this one if spending monies is absolutely necessary.
3) My computer is so old that it does not understand the concept of wireless internet.
4) My computer hasn't fared well in storage... it used to be slow in starting up, but this is BAD! It has taken me 30 minutes to log into the GUEST account.

Long story short, I see two options.

1) Take this to a computer guy and waste the money I need for college.
2) Somehow get the mac to recognize my old computer as external storage and simply drag the files off?

Is the latter even possible? Is there any way for me to get these files off using the Mac with little to no input on the part of the PC? If I have to log in to the PC and drag them from there, it will literally take weeks of watching that stupid little Windows hourglass, and my Thanksgiving Break only lasts until Monday.

I need to move about 50 GB. (Actually less now that I think about it... the computer is so old it only has 70GB total of storage!) The problem is that the computer is so darn old that last time I was at home, I tried to open a *tiny* internet JPG and it took like ten minutes...

THANK YOU for anyone who has any good suggestions!

-Mackenzie

EDIT: It has officially taken 55 minutes for me to log on to my PC. The empty guest account. HAPPY THANKSGIVING >_<

 

[Jashwua]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

Well there are 2 ways I can see this getting done.

1. You could format the external hard drive you mentioned using Disk Utility in SL. Make sure you format it using fat32. It might be called exfat in SL.

Then you would connect it to your pc and drag the files over and then connect the drive to your Mac and transfer the files. However you said that the pc is very slow and that this would take forever.

2. You could connect the 2 using your home network. To do this you would first connect the pc via ethernet to your router and share the folders or the entire C drive in xp.

Then you should be able to see the shared folders on your MB in Finder under the shared tab. Then you could drag and drop the 50gb or so that you wish to transfer.

To enable sharing of a folder in windows xp simply navigate to that folder and right click on properties and Under the sharing tab check the box that says "share this folder on the network"

And you should be set. Let us know if this works out.

 

[johnhurley]

I need to move about 50 GB. (Actually less now that I think about it... the computer is so old it only has 70GB total of storage!) The problem is that the computer is so darn old that last time I was at home, I tried to open a *tiny* internet JPG and it took like ten minutes...

THANK YOU for anyone who has any good suggestions!

To me I would be suspicious that your old machine has gotten hacked/taken over ... it does not make sense to me that a 2004 machine would take 50 minutes to login. My daughter has an old laptop Toshiba from before 2000 that still runs win xp and it only takes 90 odd seconds to boot up.

So I would be really really suspicious of anything that comes off that machine.

I think trying to load stuff onto an external disk is the best solution at this time. Lots of inexpensive USB drives at Best Buy etc today probably find something in the 50/60 dollar range if you need to go that low.

You can use windows explorer to drag stuff from that machine onto an external drive.

An even cheaper solution would be to get a 10 dollar flash drive and just move some of the most important stuff over there.

If and when you get stuff onto external storage I would seriously think about asking someone who has a nice up to date win system with good antivirus protection to scan everything before even thinking about moving it any further.

To play devils advocate you are evidently getting along so far without anything from that machine so what happens if you can't get anything from it?

 

[DockMac]

I would try booting off an external hard drive, cd-rom drive, or floppy into Windows or Linux that can read the internal drive. Then transfer files from there.

If you can get an OS up, you may be able to just use an ethernet cable to network the two computers together and do the file transfer that way.

A computer shouldn't take that long to load, unless the OS is effed up, or the HD is effed up.

Also another thing to try is loading Windows into Safe Mode.