Transferring info to new computer

I have purchased a new computer and would like to take several programs and files from my old one. Is it possible to simply connect the machines via USB and read the old computer as a drive on the new computer? If it isn't possible to do it that way, what would be the best method of transferring the information I want from the old to the new?

Right for starters you can NOT move installed programs in such a way, during the install process there are many (possibly 1000's) of various entries made within the system, so as far as programs go they must be physically installed on the new system, BUT, if you have the installation file on the old system you can move that over to install on the new system. Saving your actual files is certainly doable, but I don't think it's as simple as using any old cable, there are cables sold for exactly this use, I bought one once, and TBH I never managed to get it to work, for me the simplest fastest cheapest solution is to physically remove the drive from the old system and add it into the new system, then it is as simple as just dragging your files over to where you want, let me know what you feel about this and we can go from there.

wow…I hadn't really considered doing that. I have some techinical knowledge, so I can probably get through it (with help! ). However, I have some concerns and they mostly deal with information that you don't have; The new computer has 2 separate drives in it already, a 500gb and a 250 gb hard drive. The box of the new system will easily fit a third, can I hook that many drives up to the board? Also, The new coputer already has windows 7 on it as well. Is there a concern that the systems will "clash" meaning that the windows 7 and XP will attempt to start at the same time?

Right first you need to identify what type of drive(s) they are, they will hopefully be Sata drives, otherwise they will be ide, Sata drives you can have as many as the board has connection for, also they have no master slave issues to worry about, ide drives on the other hand do have restrictions, you can only have 2 drives on the one lead\connector, and they must have the jumper moved to the correct position for the situation your placing it in, CS (Cable Select) means it should be able to be treated as needed, otherwise you have to set it as master\slave as required, master is the boot\OS drive in essence, slave is purely storage. Should you have ide drives you can simply cheat, just temporarily swap the new systems slave with this one set as slave, then reverse this when complete, simple, Sata drives do have 1 possible spanner they can throw in the works, hopefully you will be fine, but I mention it to raise awareness, sometimes adding a Sata drive can cause confusion, 2 possible issues can occur, both related to each other, should your system start trying to boot to the old drive then you need to enter the bios, same if the drive is not picked up at all, simple changes in the bios should fix both issues. Now if you need to enter the bios you will need to look for a couple of things, some boards allow activating of individual Sata ports, so if your drive is not seen then you may need to activate the port it's attached to, should it be trying to be the boot drive you need to find entries relating to drive priority, and boot drive, you just need to tell the system which drive is the one to boot from, the bios shows a menu to say what buttons to use to change the order etc, needless to say make sure you do NOT change anything else while in there or your system could mess up, when done save and exit and you should be able to do all you need. The fact that there are 2 OS drives is not a problem, as long as the system is told which to treat as master it will be fine, all you will notice is when accessing it through the My Computer on the new system, is that you will see the folders the same as the new system, just navigate in through the menu's until you get to the location the files are stored, drag\copy them to the new drive, and jobs done, when complete shut down and remove the old drive, and set the new system back to it's original state, any queries feel free to ask, should you fear you touched\changed something you shouldn't in the bios, and can't be sure what to do, exit without saving and no harm will be done, just begin again, hope this helps.