98 master and xp slave hd question

There is something wrong with my comp. A million times slower than it should be. Virus scans didn't fix the problem but got rid of a lot of trojan horses. I have an old computer and a new hard drive, so what I want to do is install windows 98 on the new hard drive on the old computer, put the problemed hard drive in as slave and dump all my files on the new hard drive, then reinstall windows xp.
Master -- Windows 98 -- new, clean
Slave -- Windows XP Home -- old, problemed, filled with important files
My problem is that when I setup the above configuration I only see the recovery partition of the old hard drive. I don't see all the files I need to move.
Anyone have any ideas?
I tried putting in the new, clean hd in as slave and moving the files, but it took 9 hours to move not even a gig. Waste of time.
Thanks,
Mike

 

Try booting into Safe Mode and transferring the files there (start tapping the F8 key after you see the keyboard LED flash at startup).

Matt

 

Safe mode: don't know why I didn't think of that! It worked. Thanks!
-mike

 

You're welcome. Thanks for letting us know.