Might be helpful to point out that telnet is disabled on most modern Linux distributions, for security reasons. Telnet sends all information in the clear, including passwords. Any distro worth its salt has openssh active on installation (unless it's a locked-down distro).
I suspect that the OP wants to be able to access files from the XP workstation? If so, Google "Samba". Your Linux distro probably has lots of relevant documentation too.