It sounds as though, when you burned your multisession CD, you may have lost some of the disk ident data from the first segment of the file transfer stuff when you burned subsequent sessions. The transfer program is telling you that you have the wrong disk, not that there's nothing on the disk. The second session may have re-identified the disk as disk 2. The transfer program requires that the data be on specifically identified disks, as I recall, and it appears to expect a multi-disk setup, rather than multi folders on a single disk.

CD burners in portables seem to have a tendency to fail to readily identify a blank disk. I have two with this problem (Both Dell). Often just clicking retry, or removing and reinserting the disk will get it to pick them up, but you may have to do it several times. The problem seems particularly stubborn if you're using fast (>48x) blanks in a burner with a slower burner max rating. I have a very fast burner in my laptop, that I seldom use, because it gives me so much trouble with disk recognition. It's easier to use the very slow burner in the desktop.

And not all CD-R burners are CD-R/W, and if it can't burn them it may have trouble reading them.

You can make a direct parallel connection from XP to another computer, if you don't have serial ports to zero-modem them. Look in Start Help Index and search for "connect" on the XP. The same info is probably in 98SE, but you have to run the "direct connect" utility to get to where it tells you what kind of connection choices you have - and I don't have the utility installed on my surviving 98SE machine. This would require an appropriate Direct Parallel cable.

I'm told that you can zero-modem USB to USB; but I've never seen the appropriate cables in any local outlets; so I assume it doesn't work well enough to be a popular option.

You almost certainly do have a serial port on the new machine, but it's likely disguised as a mouse port. If you can find the adaptors, you should be able to use the external mouse port as a serial, but going through adapters and zero cable, on a port that expects to see a mouse, could be problematic.

You best bet would really be to blow the $30 (US) or so for a 4-port (or maybe 12-port for later expansion) Etherlink switching hub (assuming both computers have ports - most laptops do) and make a LAN connection between the two computers. The hub and a couple of short 10Base-T cables probably won't cost much more than the Direct Connect Parallel cable, since the P-cables are pretty much a "special" item. Once the LAN is set up, you can plug in or disconnect pretty much as needed to use your present two, and/or any future/visiting ones.

John