Dear onetwothreefour-ga,
Thank you for the directed question; most flattering. I hope I can
provide you with a satisfactory answer.
As it happens, there is a known issue with using Direct Cable
Connection between Windows 98 and Windows XP. I've found a description
of this issue and the workaround:
"To be able to connect, I decided to try the option: 'Always allow
directly connected devices such as palmtop computers to connect
without providing a password'
Now, I was able to connect from my Windows 95 system."
- Windows XP Direct Cable Connection from Windows 95,
http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxpdcc9i.htm
There are detailed step-by-step instructions available for setting up
a connection between a Windows XP and a Windows 98 machine, including
this workaround, available from Parallel Technologies:
http://www.lpt.com/Support/DCC-SetUp/dcc-setup.htm
(then scroll down to section IV: "Windows XP to Windows 9x/Me Direct
(Cable) Connection Setup")
although they are rather too long to place within the body of this
answer, copyright issues being what they are.
If these instructions don't help, another likely possibility is that
it might be a cable issue - you should be aware that a standard
parallel cable, such as you might use to connect a PC to a printer
switch-box, for example, won't work for Direct Cable Connection.
Instead, you need a Laplink/Interlink cable, or - if you have a recent
motherboard which lets you enable ECP ports in the BIOS, a
"DirectParallel Universal Fast Cable".
More informstion on the cabling required is available here:
http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/dcccable.htm
I can personally recommend the DirectParallel cable (
http://www.lpt.com/Shop/shop.asp#DirectParallelUniversalFastCable ) as
providing a suitably fast transfer speed over the direct cable
connection, close to that you might expect from a 10 Mbit Ethernet
connection.
If you still have trouble after trying this, I can certainly try to
debug the problem for you, or there are the other alternatives you
mention. The first one, and one that I'd immediately discard, is the
possibility of using a serial cable rather than a parallel one to
connect the two computers, still using Direct Cable Connection.
However, taking into account the volume of data you have to transfer,
this would be painfully slow, and as such I couldn't recommend it.
Second is the possibility of setting up an Ethernet network to connect
the machines in question. Amazon.com sell various networking kits
designed for this purpose at around the $80 mark, such as this Linksys
solution:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00003006O/qid=1042763966/br=1-3/ref=br_lf_e_3//103-6875762-3186245?v=glance&s=electronics&n=281415
(Note that these solutions are generally designed to connect two
desktop computers; as one of your machines is a laptop, you would need
to obtain a separate PCMCIA network card for it if it does not include
its own Ethernet port.)
This would work best if your laptop happens to be one of the many
laptop designs which includes an integral Ethernet port, in which case
you would only need a network card for your existing desktop and a
crossover cable, which you should be able to obtain cheaply from any
computer shop.
And a final, third solution avoids the direct connection entirely. For
that volume of data, another possibility would simply be to burn the
whole of the 6GB you wish to transfer onto CD-R, and copy it from them
on to the laptop. This, of course, depends on you having, or having
access to a CD-R burner, but I thought I'd mention it as they do seem
to be becoming increasingly common these days.
Hopefully the direct cable connection solution will work for you at
this point; if you run into any problems implementing this, or if
you'd prefer to pursue one of the other solutions in detail, please
feel free to request a
clarification,
cerebrate-ga
Search Strategy:
Google Microsoft Search "direct cable connection" -
://www.google.com/microsoft?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=direct+cable+connection
Personal knowledge. |
Clarification of Answer by
cerebrate-ga
on
18 Jan 2003 05:29 PST
Dear onetwothreefour-ga,
Good to hear we got the cable problem sorted out, at least.
I'm still hunting out information on the authentication problem, but I
do have a few preliminary suggestions that you might try:
1. Is the "guest" account enabled on the Windows XP machine? If not,
that's something you might try for the XP-as-host configuration.
2. Microsoft Knowledge Base article 306065 (
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306065 )
suggests that a connection may not establish if "Dial-Up Adapter"
isn't installed in the Windows 98 network properties; I don't think
this is the problem, but if you could confirm that it's there it'd be
one more thing to eliminate.
Unfortunately, the only other MSKB article I've found so far that
appears relevant is 310152 (
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310152 ) which
covers ensuring that the two ends of the connection have corresponding
network protocols, and we've already done that. None of them, alas,
are forthcoming on the authentication issue.
3. Again with XP as the host, could you try deleting any/all *.pwl
files from C:\WINDOWS on the Windows 98 machine - you need to do this
from a command prompt boot - and try again after a restart? Old
password information cached in such files has given me this type of
trouble before.
I've got a few places left to try searching, and I'm going to see if I
can put together a similar setup to run some tests on myself this
weekend, so don't take this as the last resort - but it may take me a
while to get that set up and tested, I'm afraid.
Sorry for the delay,
cerebrate-ga
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