Networking.

Hi. Newbie here. Got a big new iMac OS X 10.7.4. New D-link DSL-3730B Modem.

The OSX Lion 'Missing Manual", Parallels run Windows on your Mac, and all sorts of odds and sods for my ancient PC running windows 7.
All I wish to do is to get them talking to each other, with all the windows drives available to the mac as required, and vici versa. All family history is on external hard drives using windows, and I need to get everything transferred to mac, before the old PC dies on me.
Have already purchased external hard drives for the Mac in anticipation.

Can any body please advise.
I'm not the sharpest tack in the Mac Package, and am at my wits end.

Welcome to the Mac Forums and congratulations with your new Mac.

Your Windows drives are likely formatted to NTFS which means they will be read only from your Mac. I'm assuming there are some things you wish to transfer from your Windows PC to the Mac.

Keep in mind that many things can not be transferred such as programs, games, and certain documents. Other items - photos, music, including your iTunes media folder, movies, MS Office documents, contacts, IE bookmarks, can all be transferred.

You mentioned family history being on an external hard drive. Not sure I know what you mean by that? A genealogy program with data?

There are several methods you can use to transfer. One would be to setup a network between your old PC and your new Mac. Another way would be to use the Windows Migration Assistant for Lion. (free download from Apple).