On your old computer, click start, help, and search for "File and Settings Transfer Wizard".

You did not provide enough information about your two computers for someone to be able to make an accurate recommendation, and you did not wish to buy 'anything'. This is a challenge, but her goes anyway. I'll be making a lot of assumptions about your two systems.

First off, you said both computers had XP as operating systems, so I assume that the new computer is set up and running, and all you want to do is transfer data files, and not installed software.

Secondly, I assume that both computers have only one hard drive each, and if so, the chore become easy. You will need, however, a second IDE drive cable for hooking up a 2-drive system. [See also the end of this message about "thumb drives"]

a. Remove the hard drive from the old computer and set its jumper to "slave".

b. Look at the hard drive in the new system and insure that it is set to "master". If has no jumper in place, ass one in the "master' postiion.
c. Commect the old hsrd drive to the second IDE conector. With caution, you don't have to install the old drive into a bay. Tape some cardboard across the bottom of the drive to prevent it from shorting the exposed solder points.

d. Boot up and both drives show show. Create whatever folders and/or subfolders that you require on the new drive and merely 'copy' files from the old drive to the new as desired. The transfer will be super fast compared to other methods. I recommend using "copy" over "move" because if anything happens, you will still have the files on the old drive.

e. After the files have been copied, shut down and remove the old drive and its data cable.

d. Close up the new computer and you are done. You can leave the 'master' jumper on the new drive.

If the old drive is not too old, it can be used as a second drive in the new computer or as a external drive throgh a USB connection. To use as a USB drive, you will have to buy an adapter and put the drive into this adapter. But before you buy the adapter, check out the prices of external drives already housed in a case for USB ports. There may not be much difference in price.

As an alternative, you can get "thunb drives" that plug into a USB port and use this for data storage and file transfers. I do not recommend using a thumb drive as a hard disk since these do have limited write/rewrite life.

By the way, if you do not have humungeous amount of data to trandfer to the the new computer, you can use a 'thumb drive' for this. These came in several capacity sizes, BUT you will have to buy one. These are very easy to use and do not require an installation work - just plug and go (afer the system finds and recognizes the drive) and most are 'hot' swappable meaing you can plug and unplug without powering down. One caveat: before unplugging, click on the "safetly remove hardware" icon in XP's lower right tray. A popup menu should appear showing the installed storage devices. Click (or double-click) on the device you are about to unplug and wait until the system tells you it is ok to remove. Why do this? This is done to insure that all files on the storage device have been properly closed thus removing the danger of smashing a file on the next write to the device.

I second the suggestion of using a "thumb" drive to transfer the files you want to move. These are very inexpensive and make the process so easy. Just copy from the old comp to the drive, then copy from the thumb drive to the new comp. Easy and painless.

I also always use a thumb drive when I have to "move" off a computer. Some of the best money I ever spent.

CD's or DVD's work fine if the amount of data you're talking about is manageable. If you don't have an external HD for back-ups anyway I strongly recommend you get one on general principals and that, of course, would make data transfer easy, too. Since you say you don't want to buy anything, perhaps the CD/DVD method would be best for you...and they can also serve as permanent back-ups for for data you're transferring.