a year and a half ago, my beloved computer, which had all of my music and writing files i had made for the past three years, got a horrible virus and was rendered useless.

i friend of mine was able to wipe the system clean but save all of those files. however, the disc burner dno longer works, and i can't install software to make it work without installing a complete new OS, so i need to network the two computers to get the files into my current computer?

my question: how do i network two computers? is it easy?
the old computer is running with windows ME for now and my current one has XP.

Pick up a crossover ethernet cable. It's essentially a cat-5 cable configured to connect two computers via their ethernet jacks. Or, if you have a router with an extra port, just connect it (the old comp) to the router.