When a Windows 95 to XP game refuses to run on Windows 10 or 11, even after every fix, a second-hand office PC with Windows XP runs it the way it ran in its day. It costs about 100 to 200 euros, and it stays offline.
Try our Windows guide first: most games run on a modern PC with the right fix, and an emulator such as 86Box covers the 90s. A real XP PC is worth it for 3D games that emulators run badly, for EAX sound, for old joysticks and wheels, and for the games that defeated everything else.
Which PC to buy
Buy a PC with an Intel processor of the 2nd or 3rd generation, made from 2011 to 2013. They are the last ones with Windows XP drivers, and big office models of those years are cheap and solid.
- Dell OptiPlex 790, 990, 7010 and 9010: Dell still lists Windows XP drivers for all four. The best choice.
- HP Compaq 8200 Elite and Elite 8300: HP made an XP graphics driver for them.
Newer PCs are a poor choice, for three reasons:
- 4th generation (Haswell, from 2013): Intel made no XP driver for its graphics, and Dell dropped XP from the OptiPlex 9020. It can work with a graphics card added, but you are on your own.
- 6th generation (Skylake, from 2015) and later: the USB 2 controller is gone, so the keyboard and mouse do not work during XP setup, and Windows XP cannot read the way these boards describe themselves. Community patches exist, but this is a project, not an install.
- 7th generation and later: many of these PCs start only in UEFI mode, with no legacy BIOS mode, and Windows XP cannot start at all. Dell's own PCs are like this from the 7th generation.
Prefer the tower model to the small one. The small and slim cases only take low-profile cards, with a weaker power supply: on the OptiPlex 7010, 275 W for the tower and 240 W for the small model.
Graphics card
The Intel graphics built into these PCs have an XP driver and handle 2D games and light 3D. For 3D games of the late 90s and 2000s, add a graphics card of the right age.
- NVIDIA: the last XP driver, 368.81 from 2016, covers the GeForce 400 to 700 series, plus the GTX 950 and 960. The GTX 970, 980 and the 10 series are not on its list.
- AMD: the last XP driver, Catalyst 14.4 from 2014, covers the Radeon HD 5000 to the R9 290.
Neither brand is better for old games across the board: forum users who test this disagree. A few very old games use features that modern cards dropped, such as paletted textures, and only a card of their own years runs those right. In a small case, pick a low-profile card.
Sound
The sound chip on the board works, but a sound card brings back what Windows Vista took away: EAX, the 3D sound effects of many games of the 2000s. It is the best reason to build an XP PC at all.
Since Windows Vista, Windows no longer lets the sound card render 3D sound itself, so EAX games lose their effects on a modern PC. Windows XP still allows it. With a Creative Sound Blaster card of the time that has an XP driver, these games sound as they were designed to.
Without a card, the Realtek sound of these boards has XP drivers. A USB sound card works with no driver if it follows USB Audio Class 1.0; a card that only follows version 2.0 needs a driver from its maker.
Memory
A 32-bit Windows XP uses a little less than 4 GB of memory, so 4 GB is all you need. The built-in graphics take part of it, so add a graphics card if you want it all for games.
Settings before you install
Three settings in the BIOS decide whether Windows XP installs at all. Change them first, then start the setup.
- SATA mode: set SATA Operation to ATA or IDE instead of AHCI. Windows XP has no AHCI driver, so with AHCI its setup finds no hard disk, or stops on a blue screen with error 0x7B. The OptiPlex 7010 comes set to AHCI.
- USB 3 ports: set the USB 3 mode (xHCI) to Auto or Smart Auto, so the blue ports work as USB 2. Windows XP has no USB 3 driver.
- Boot mode: choose the legacy BIOS mode (Legacy, or CSM), not UEFI.
If you want to keep AHCI, add Intel's storage driver during setup: press F6 when the setup asks, or put the driver into the CD with nLite beforehand. Its last version, 1.4.9.3 from 2013, is the one that handles Windows XP.
Windows XP and its activation
You need a Windows XP CD with Service Pack 3 and a valid key. In 2026, activation is the hard part: plan it before you buy anything.
Microsoft has stopped selling Windows XP, its online activation is gone, and its phone activation has ended too. An installed XP that is not activated stops working after 30 days. What still works:
- The CD and key of a PC sold with Windows XP: a maker's own CD often activates by itself on that maker's PC. PCs sold with Windows 7, like most of the models above, do not do this, so do not count on it.
- Volume-licence media, which needs no activation, if your company holds that licence.
Avoid the modified versions found online, such as "Windows XP Integral Edition": they are not from Microsoft, they get around activation, and nobody knows what else was changed in them. WinWorld, which hosts Windows 95 and 98, does not host the final Windows XP.
After the install
Install the drivers of your PC from its maker's support page, then the runtimes old games need. Most games then install from their CD images as they did in their day.
Install the graphics and sound drivers first. The Intel "chipset driver" only names the devices in the Device Manager, so it does no harm to skip it. Then install the DirectX 9.0c runtime and the Visual C++ runtimes, as our Windows guide explains. A mounting program for CD images is on our main page.
Keep it offline
Windows XP has had no regular security updates since 8 April 2014. Do not use it on the internet: no browser, no email, and no network cable if you can.
Move games to it with a USB stick, after checking the files on your modern PC. Old NoCD files and patches are where problems come from, and a modern antivirus sees them before the XP PC does.
I need help!
We do not provide support for running abandonware games. The Vogons forums are where people build and fix old PCs, and they know these office models well.
Tell them which PC, which card and what you see: you will get an answer much faster. Have fun!
Checked in October 2026 against the makers' own driver pages and documentation, Microsoft's pages and the Vogons and WinRaid forums. This guide was drafted with the help of an AI assistant and checked by hand before publishing. If something here is out of date, tell us.