Linux will internetwork with Windows, but Windows can sometimes be problematic about it. You might be thinking of Samba or LinNeighborhood. But I find that the simplest solution is often the best - I don't use these when I'm trying to recover files. Instead I start a FTP server on the box that I want to transfer the files to, and I use Konouror as the FTP client to transfer the files. You'll find that FTP transfers the files much faster than Windows networking will (Windows XP seems to deliberately slow down the transfers when it detects that it isn't talking to another Windows system, or even an old Win98 system!)