I hope someone can send some advice my way concerning my wanting a dual boot system running Win 10 Home & Win XP Pro. At present I only have Win 10 loaded and am shopping for Win XP Pro x64. With the number of options available on Ebay I’m not sure what to buy. I know I want to stay away from purchasing an ISO download and only purchase an authentic Microsoft CD & product key. Hopefully someone can answer the following questions.
1. Are the updates (the fixes) that were put out by Microsoft back in the day still available somewhere on the Microsoft website to download even though they have ended support for Win XP?
2. There seem to be 2 choices available when buying the CD & Product Key. One is advertised for refurbishing PC’s c/w key and one is advertised as “Authentic Hologram CD w/ key not a refurbish license”. What’s the difference?
3. There are also different Service Packs available. One CD is advertised as SP1a, one advertised as “including service pack 2”. In researching this I read a few posts between Geek & Patio in which Patio stated in essence that if you are installing Win XP and it doesn’t include SP1 “you’re in for a fun ride”. I’m assuming that the CD that is advertised as including SP2 would also have SP1 but I seem to remember that XP also had SP3 available. Would SP3 & SP2 still be available for download somewhere on the Microsoft website if I ended up purchasing a CD with only SP1 on it?
Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me.