Best Way to Preserve and Run XP-only Software on Failing HD in Win 10

[dwubin]

A client of mine relies very heavily on an ultra specialized piece of software that is too costly to upgrade out of Win XP. Unfortunately, that (consider it) irreplaceable software lives on a hard drive that will soon fail.

I intended to clone the old drive onto a new one but discovered the older drive was IDE and kept failing during regular AHCI transfer. Should I create a disk image instead?

What is the best way to preserve the XP version of the software and run it on a whole new, updated machine (Win 10)? Virtual box of XP? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[SugarPsycho]

Windows has a comparability function what you would do is right click the application>properties>compatibility> Check run this program in compatibility mode for> drop down to windows XP. I am not sure what to do about the drive a disk image might work, but it sounds like the format is too old.

If the compatibility mode doesn't work vitualbox is a free vm

 

[Mark RM]

I second Virtualbox, it has good support for XP, better than Hyper V.

Try and create a disk image, see how it goes. No harm in trying.

 

[dwubin]

I second Virtualbox, it has good support for XP, better than Hyper V.

Try and create a disk image, see how it goes. No harm in trying.

Right on. Thanks for your help bros. You think this will work with an IDE image?