The granddaddy of file moving software make a product called
filemover which works okay with SP2 apparently. Given you already have a USB cable (assuming that the cable itself isn't the cause of the problem, i.e. that it is physically damaged) you could just buy the download version.
In the good ol' pre-Windows days you could install the laplink software on the second machine without a disk - you ran a DOS command and the software was squirted down the wire by the first machine. So that's progress! Mind you, I frequently use a firewire cable to link two Macs and that works with a single key being held down as it boots, no configuration required.
To conclude:
There's a new piece of software called FileMover that will do the job - remove the old one and install this.