Setting up a Windows XP VM in %CURRENTYEAR%
WINDOWS XP IS OUTDATED AND INSECURE! While this guide will go over some mitigations, please keep in mind that the OS may be compromised anyways, so keep any personal data off this machine and segment it away from the rest of your network. More mitigations shall be discussed at the end of this page, but in general do not set up old operating systems with any access to the internet unless you are aware of the ramifications!
This guide, while semi-general, is written under the context of needing a Windows XP installation to run software relevant for the AIBO ERS-7
1: Getting Started
Please prepare the following:
- PC running hypervisor of choice
- This guide will create the VM under Proxmox. You can use another hypervisor of choice, and the general concepts will still apply here
- A clean Windows XP SP3 professional ISO with key
- Hardware pass-through requirements (skip if not relevant):
- To connect to the Sony CLIE PDA for working with the AIBO, I needed a USB PCIe card to be passed through. Windows XP predates USB 3.0 which most cards you can find online do use, so you do need to be aware of driver support which not all cards have for XP.
- I used this card without issues following manual driver installation
- To connect to the Sony CLIE PDA for working with the AIBO, I needed a USB PCIe card to be passed through. Windows XP predates USB 3.0 which most cards you can find online do use, so you do need to be aware of driver support which not all cards have for XP.
- A method to segment the VM from the rest of your LAN
- Many hypervisors for their internet passthrough can have settings for this
- In this case, I will be using an USB to ethernet adapter (through the PCIe card) as I need direct connection to a WIFI AP using WEP for the AIBO
- A method to backup and restore different states of your VM
- I will be using the Proxmox backup server of my proxmox cluster, please check for your hypervisor how to prepare for this.