Of course, the likelihood that XP will recognize the hardware on a new machine is very low — and the drivers for new devices simply don’t exist for XP. So it’s an uphill climb.
No, M$ has stood down its XP authentication servers. But you still can reinstall it on the same hardware without the need of authentication.
M$ ended mainstream support for Win7 in January of 2015. Which was more than three years ago.
My but how those M$ operating systems have been flying off the store shelves since they finally ditched XP.
Speaking of which, I was running three different systems on XP until earlier this summer when Mozilla stopped updating Firefox for XP. And that was the handwriting on the wall. Loaded Linux on all three. But the XP systems still were being patched because I had applied the "Windows Embedded POSReady 2009" hack. When M$'s update servers asked them what they were, they replied that they were an ATM running embedded XP. Which M$ will continue to patch through 2019.
I ran win10 for two years but gave up on it because I couldn't come to grips with how clumsy and amateurish its implementation of User Account Control was. UAC sucks in Win7, too, but at least in Win7 you can completely disable it.
AND, Windows XP, which has the old 5.1 Kernel, would be inherently unsecure, and a huge security risk.
Due to ever-evolving circumstances, the whole 5.X kernel had become almost impossible to patch to prevent the most exploits. (Windows 2000 server and Workstation + 5.0; Windows XP = 5.1, and Server 2003 = 5.2.).
These are the simple realities of the modern computer age. Older exploits never really go away and can still get the older systems, and new ones are added daily. It is a constant struggle.
Vista, 7, 2008, 8, 2008, 8.1 and 2012 all use the 6.X kernel.
Windows 10 and Server 2016 use the 10.X kernel.