How do I add an old computer to my network in order to get old files from it?

Depending on how old your computer is, you may have a hard time accessing your files over the network. There are a couple of things you can do though. If your old computer has a USB 2.0 port, you can plug in a flash drive or external hard drive and copy your files that way. If your computer doesnt have a USB port or it's broken, you can try removing the hard drive and copying you're via a SATA/IDE to USB converter. If your old computer was made more recently, you could purchase a data transfer cable from a variety of companies, which will let you connect 2 computers and transfer data between them.

well it actually should not need to have anything done. Router security is for wireless connections you will need to set up file sharing which will vary between operating systems possibly need to turn a firewall off etc..

it can be a pain a simpler way is to pull the hard drive and use an ide to usb converter like this one here

http://www.amazon.com/USB-2-0-SATA-Cable-Adapter/d...

you may need to swap the drive from cable select to master but that is about all you will need to do!

Your best bet is to hook up a simple external device such as a USB / hard drive, and extract the files. The is probably the easiest and quickest way to get your files.

Hope this helps!

If you have windows 7, you can connect all of your computers into a homegroup and get files that way.

why not just plug a USB into your old PC and copy the files on to it?