I recently built a Linux Mint box for browsing, however I still rely on a legacy XP box (Opteron 185 circa 2006) for the bulk of my work. Except for browsing, it's more than adequate for my needs.
I'm still learning Linux but one thing is certain.. I absolutely despise LibreOffice. Moreover, some of my mission-critical software can't be ported to Linux, or in few cases, to any other machine. Not a good situation.
I'm getting tired of having 2 systems on my desk, so the plan is to restore an image of my live XP installation in a VM (VirtualBox VM) on the Linux system. It has a 7700K CPU w/32GB of RAM so VM performance shouldn't be an issue. There's a long thread in the VirtualBox forum explaining how to do this. The first step is to do a clean install of XP in VirtualBox to get the drivers sorted. Then I can restore an image of my live XP partition in the VM. I use Acronis TrueImage 9. It's served me well for over a decade.
As it turns out, all my Windows CD's going back to Win98 are the Upgrade version (I started with Win3.1 on an OEM box). So I need to buy the "full" version of XP to do the clean install on the VM.
Searching eBay, I found two possibilities:
1) pre-owned retail box, full version, with license key from original owner
2) new disk and COA/key for distribution with a refurbished PC
The cost is about the same. Since I'll be overwriting the clean install with an image of my own licensed version, it probably doesn't matter which way I go, but since I've never purchased a pre-owned Windows CD, I wasn't sure if the COA will work. OTOH, the version intended for a refurbished PC is totally unfamiliar to me. I'd be grateful if someone would allay my concerns.
I'm still learning Linux but one thing is certain.. I absolutely despise LibreOffice. Moreover, some of my mission-critical software can't be ported to Linux, or in few cases, to any other machine. Not a good situation.
I'm getting tired of having 2 systems on my desk, so the plan is to restore an image of my live XP installation in a VM (VirtualBox VM) on the Linux system. It has a 7700K CPU w/32GB of RAM so VM performance shouldn't be an issue. There's a long thread in the VirtualBox forum explaining how to do this. The first step is to do a clean install of XP in VirtualBox to get the drivers sorted. Then I can restore an image of my live XP partition in the VM. I use Acronis TrueImage 9. It's served me well for over a decade.
As it turns out, all my Windows CD's going back to Win98 are the Upgrade version (I started with Win3.1 on an OEM box). So I need to buy the "full" version of XP to do the clean install on the VM.
Searching eBay, I found two possibilities:
1) pre-owned retail box, full version, with license key from original owner
2) new disk and COA/key for distribution with a refurbished PC
The cost is about the same. Since I'll be overwriting the clean install with an image of my own licensed version, it probably doesn't matter which way I go, but since I've never purchased a pre-owned Windows CD, I wasn't sure if the COA will work. OTOH, the version intended for a refurbished PC is totally unfamiliar to me. I'd be grateful if someone would allay my concerns.