not access win xp home edition

Firstly with XP Home you are limited to 5 concurent connections so if you have more than 5 computers you are going to have some problems.

But having said that you should start off with running the Network Setup Wizard on the XP unit and enable File & Printer Sharing and when you get to the end og the Wizard make a Floppy Disc that will allow you to install the XP networking protocols onto the other Computers.

Once you have the floppy made insert it into one of the computers make sure that everything is connected and then run the floppy. You may be asked to reboot the computer and if that happens remove the floppy before performing the reboot and then reboot and follow the prompts allowing File & Printer Sharing.

When you have done this an all the computers you then need to share something so that the files or printer can be seen and used by the other computers to do this right click on whatever it is that you weant to share and on the drop down menu chose Sharing and left click on it. Different OS have different directions here but it's a follow your nose type thing and you shouldn't have any problems.

When it comes to the Printer open the Printers on the machine that it is installed on and again right click on the printer and chose Share, you'll need to give the printer a name but generally the default will surfice. Just a note of caution here as you haven't stated the Make or Model of the printer it's possible that it may not be possible to Network it and if that is the case you'll need to install it on the newest computer and then transfer the files to that that you want to print.

Col

hmmm. have some smoke burns on my butt here...
using the Network Setup Wizard to create a floppy to take to the other pc's is the way to go.
while it does 'install the xp network protocols' ((ahem)) what i bet went wrong is that you don't have a user account on the xp box with the same login name and password as the win 2000 or 98 box is using. the xp box can see 'out' to the others, yes?
if you've already run the network setup wizard and still no joy, see this article which talks about accidentally creating a bridged network connection on the xp box which messes stuff up. you just delete the bridge.
You Cannot Connect to Other Computers After Running Network Setup Wizard
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823305/en-us

other thoughts:
check your firewall in your router, it may be blocking browsing
slow printing from win98 could be low hard disk space and/or fragmentation on the win98 box. print sharing problematic from win98 to xp imho. bring win98 box up to date on all updates and maybe just get a print server if you can afford it...