I have 2 computers. Computer A is a Compaq, 500MHZ processor
speed, 256MB ram, 17GB active hard drive and a 20GB second hard drive,
Win98SE is installed on the active hard drive. I use the second hard drive
as a backup for important files and I keep an image file of the main hard
drive as a restore in case it should quit working. I use Norton Ghost 2003 for
doing the image file backups to the second hard drive.
The second computer B is a Seanix, 2GB processor speed, 512MB ram,
80GB hard drive, Win98SE installed. It has just the operating system installed
and whatever that is included with the OS. This is a newer and far better machine
than my original computer A. What would be the simplest way to transfer the
contents of the hard drive from Computer A to the much larger hard drive on
]Computer B without losing any data and settings?
Both have CD-RW drives installed.

As these are totally different in hardware, swapping drives over would be a recipe for chaos as all the wrong drivers get loaded to the wrong chipsets.

Uninstalling all IDE, USB (in fact all motherboard and video devices) then power down and swap *might* work, then reloading all the correct drivers, but your data is always at risk as things do go wrong.

You should *never* be in the position of no data backup when you have a CD writer.

The Ghost image will also have all the wrong device hardware drivers.

A clean install is recommended