“You can plug in the old hard drive into the new computer, copy everything and then put it back in the old computer.”
Well, you don’t want to overwrite important system files doing that so maybe just upload it all to its own directory & pick from that what you want.
I’ve switched computers several times now; typically when I upgrade, I will end up moving to a hard drive that is 30 or so times larger than the old one, so I make a folder on the new machine called ‘old system’, temporarily install the old hard drive on the new system (If you don’t have a spare connector on the cable, disconnect the CD ROM drive) and copy the entire contents* of the old drive into the old system folder on the new machine - that way you can fiddle around with importing/transferring files at your leisure.
Incidentally, because I copied everything, the ‘old system’ folder on my machine also contains another ‘old system’ folder with the contents of the previous machine.
*With the usual exception of the folder containing the OS, but last time, I copied that as well because I knoew there were some DLLs in there I needed.
You can buy/try software to do it at the store or download.com search for ‘migration’, here is one:
SmartClone 2.0
Automatically find and move your settings, preferences, personal files, and so on from your old PC to your new one.
OS: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP
File Size: 2.54MB
License: Free to try, $50 to buy