Q: Migration assistant not working!

I have an old macbook (about 5 years old) and just bought a new macbook pro and wanted to use migration assistant to get everything over. When I tried to do this originally it said that my older mac needed a software update so I updated both old and new macs to Yosemite and tried again. My old macbook took forever to do this but in the end managed to get migration assistant back open. It now says when I load it up "Unable to start Network Server" on my old macbook and everything I try is taking ages to do because it runs at a snails pace.

I don't have an external hard drive so can't do a Time Machine backup.

Any suggestions?