A 4meg file transfer (on my home network)LAN takes about 4 seconds from the XP machine, if I go to the older machine the same file transfer on the W98 machine takes about 7 minutes, extremely slow at best. I can ping both machines either way and the 4 packet test send only takes a few seconds. Also testing with net view \\mycomputername delivers lots of entries. I'm new to home networking but this seems like a big variation in download time,or is it? I can say that using the Internet Gateway thru a router has no discernable speed loss. Thanks for any ideas on this problem.

You might want to start by checking if your older machine has a 10 megabit network card as opposed to a 100mbit on the XP machine, you also should check to see if you have any heavy virus scanning going on with any downloaded incoming files on your 98 machine. If those both fail, are you on Cat5 cable, or Wireless router ? I suggest u check your cabling if you're on CAT5

What he said about checking the lan card speed I would do first. I have a 2 system setup and both transmit and receive at roughly the same speed. If your using a 4 or 5 port switch for just 2 computers then chunk that stuff and get a cat5 crossover cable. Keep it as short as possible and rerun the wizard. Now somewhere, I can't recall off hand but I think it's in the lan card settings, You can lock the cards at one speed or make it automatic. Also check and see if the 98 card is 16 bit. If the xp is 32 and the 98 is 16 bit you might consider getting a matched set of 32 bit cards.