Put a network card into your old computer then link this up to the new pc
Use a crossover network cable and manually set up the Ip address and net mask on both machines
Ensure you have sharing on hardrives enabled on your host machine ( You want the whole drive set up as a share , Dont forget the share name you will need this to access the drive )
This would be your old machine
Software wise you have a choice you could opt for simple dos commands by using Xcopy
See the following link for details
http://www.computerhope.com/xcopyhlp.htm#04 (Good practice if nothing else) You could opt for a more professional software using Norton’s disk copy depending on OS
Normally when I have to do this I use Xcopy myself that way you can watch source and destination drives and use verify plus copy all system files across , hidden files , and verify at the same time
Xcopy is available on all windows machines
That’s how I would do this or take your old machine put in a secondary drive set this up as a slave drive and use Xcopy Always works
Knowing hopw to use Dos is in itself a very powerfull tool ( back to basics in a nustshell ) Also worth reading is DosPower tools by Paul Somerson Executive editor of PC magazine particularly if you want to write your own com files in assembler Could be very very usefull plus of course you can also write your own batch files another strong point to do the job for you
Thats a recommended path to learning how to the basics of computing If all else fails resort to dos Its truthfully a must these days and pre requisite of all computing unless your using linux , solaris , unix in which case these commands are varied but similar in nature all stronlgy types commands You will need them later on