I probably will not be much a PC gamer again unless my kids take an interest, but when I've had brief occasions to game I've busted out the ageing XP machine and its selection of ageing game titles for a half an hour here and there of old school pc gaming. This arrangement has worked out great, but the end-of-support deadline for XP is practically here and I'd like to keep the desktop computer with some net access after that point without being a infinite-day exploit magnet for all sorts of malware. I'm probably going to rule out buying an entire new system, because as cheap and powerful as they have gotten, they will still be hundreds of dollars and I am cheap and when it comes to protecting outlets for my old school pc gaming my wife is probably going to insist I be even cheaper 
I'm looking at somehow using the windows 7 setup disk from my brother in laws destroyed laptop to do some sort of clean install of windows 7 on this computer. Or I'm looking at giving up on windows permanently and going with some version of linux and using wine and dosbox to run my old titles, with the assumption that old titles will tend to run with no noticeable performance hit under wine. Of course I know practically nothing about either using linux or windows 7 but I'm willing to learn to have something that is less of a malware magnet than my xp system would soon become.
Has microsoft (or Dell) made it pretty difficult (even impossible) to clean install to other systems using these setup disks? Has anybody here had an easy time runing 5 year old or older windows software under Wine?
Is this desktop machine likely going to be impossible to use with anything like the performance it has had if I go with linux? I'd really like to avoid sending microsoft any money to subsidize the problem.
> Mainboard : Abit IP35-E (Intel P35+ICH9R)
> Chipset : Intel P35/G33/G31
> Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 1800 MHz
> Physical Memory : 4096 MB (4 x 1024 DDR2-SDRAM )
> Video Card : ATI Technologies Inc AMD Radeon HD 6670
> Hard Disk : ST3320620AS (320 GB)
> Hard Disk : WD (500 GB)
> DVD-Rom Drive : SONY DVD RW DRU-830A
> DVD-Rom Drive : PIONEER 12X DVD-ROM
> Monitor Type : Samsung SyncMaster - 24 inches
> Network Card : Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Ltd) Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Ltd)
> Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 5.01.2600 Service Pack 3
> DirectX : Version 9.0c (May 2010)
basically old crap. But it runs all my old favorite games great and I hate throwing away working hardware.
Any advice?

I'm looking at somehow using the windows 7 setup disk from my brother in laws destroyed laptop to do some sort of clean install of windows 7 on this computer. Or I'm looking at giving up on windows permanently and going with some version of linux and using wine and dosbox to run my old titles, with the assumption that old titles will tend to run with no noticeable performance hit under wine. Of course I know practically nothing about either using linux or windows 7 but I'm willing to learn to have something that is less of a malware magnet than my xp system would soon become.
Has microsoft (or Dell) made it pretty difficult (even impossible) to clean install to other systems using these setup disks? Has anybody here had an easy time runing 5 year old or older windows software under Wine?
Is this desktop machine likely going to be impossible to use with anything like the performance it has had if I go with linux? I'd really like to avoid sending microsoft any money to subsidize the problem.
> Mainboard : Abit IP35-E (Intel P35+ICH9R)
> Chipset : Intel P35/G33/G31
> Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 1800 MHz
> Physical Memory : 4096 MB (4 x 1024 DDR2-SDRAM )
> Video Card : ATI Technologies Inc AMD Radeon HD 6670
> Hard Disk : ST3320620AS (320 GB)
> Hard Disk : WD (500 GB)
> DVD-Rom Drive : SONY DVD RW DRU-830A
> DVD-Rom Drive : PIONEER 12X DVD-ROM
> Monitor Type : Samsung SyncMaster - 24 inches
> Network Card : Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Ltd) Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Ltd)
> Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 5.01.2600 Service Pack 3
> DirectX : Version 9.0c (May 2010)
basically old crap. But it runs all my old favorite games great and I hate throwing away working hardware.
Any advice?
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