In your case, it probably won't make sense to upgrade your current computer. The reality is though, eventually you'll be forced to upgrade. There are numerous components inside your computer that could fail at any time, and your priorities will change as software versions are progressively iterated.

Given issues (3) and (9), my recommendation is to eventually buy a new computer and perform a wholesale virtualization of your current computer onto it. This also gives you the choice of switching paths to an entirely different operating system (e.g. Mac OS X or Linux) rather than to Windows 7 or newer.

The cool part here is that you can start isolating components -- for example, building a virtual machine specifically to run SQL Server.

> In your case, it probably won't make sense to upgrade your current computer. The reality is though, eventually you'll be forced to upgrade.

In a few months, I intend to get a second computer as the production computer for my startup. First, before going live, I will install Windows 7 and see what it does/doesn't do. Then I will install from the Microsoft BizSpark program appropriate copies of Windows Server, IIS, and SQL Server.

I hope to keep running XP on my present computer at least until my startup is live. Then, with some Windows 7 experience, I may install Windows 7 on my present computer -- I have three boot partitions and can put Windows 7 on one of them. If I really like Windows 7, then I will just junk XP.

Have you considered a hardware upgrade and switching to a virtual OS workflow? It sounds like it might be worth your time to consider.

I have a 4 year old AMD cpu (not sure which one), 16 GB RAM (cost about $80) and SSD (best upgrade in years)

my bare metal OS is win8, on which I have minimal software installed. I use multiple VMware images for software I don't use often or which installs too much cruft which I don't like slowing down my machine.

For example, I only need VS occasionally. For some reason even a minimal install of VS comes along with 10s of MS service packs SQL server IIS etc. Basically junk that I don't need. So now it lives in a VM that I might fire up once in a while.

Benefits of a VM:

  -- Easy backups
  -- Snapshots

On a mid range system VMware works flawlessly and gives seamless access to host resources such as networking and USB etc.

Running a XP VM would offer multiple benefits such as access to your old software and VM sandboxing for security issues that go along with running an EOLd OS

I understand virtual machines from my old IBM days, but so far I have yet to do anything with them on PCs. Likely for my startup, as the work moves along (today made good progress on some de/serialization issues -- wrote some small test programs that showed that de/serialization was working like it should; now to find out why it was not working in the code of a Web page talking to one of my 'servers', now just software on the same computer but intended to be on a separate computer, TCP/IP communications in both cases).

The sand boxing security sounds good. Maybe in practice for years VMs are the only easy path we have to security from 'malware', etc.

> Have you considered a hardware upgrade and switching to a virtual OS workflow?

I intend to buy a second computer fairly soon. I will install the copy of Windows 7 Professional I already have and then get used to the computer, arrange that each of my computers can copy backup files to the other one. And/or get a hard drive connected vis USB and some appropriate software, or maybe just use XCOPY or WinZip.

With two computers, if one of them is down for some reason, then I can still get to the Internet with the other one.

The second computer will also be the first server for my startup, to go live fairly soon -- the software is all ready except I just need to debug the code for the last two Web pages.

So this second computer will also have appropriate copies from the Microsoft BizSpark program of Windows Server, IIS, and SQL Server for production for my startup.

XP is over a decade old and you seem tech savvy enough that I can't tell if you're joking or not. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for not upgrading due to hardware or certain software but your post reads as either being stubborn or a joke.

Most of the questions you asked are readily available via a simple Google search.

I'm not joking, but Google searching all that stuff might be a lot of work and, still, might not really tell me what is going on.

I just tried a little, and it looks like Google is working better than I expected and more like you suggested:

(1) At

http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/technology-other...

is

"You’ll still be able to run XP computers and install past updates. If you need to reinstall XP from scratch, you can do so if you still have the discs that came with your computer."

Well I do have the original install disk and the codes. Hmm ..., but my install disk is an 'upgrade' from Windows 2000, so if I lost my boot drive, with three partitions, one for 2000 and two for XP, maybe I would need to install 2000 before installing XP. I have the 2000 media and codes but would wonder if the Microsoft authorization server would still be up.

(2) For my most important software tool, my favorite editor KEDIT, the first search result was from Wikipedia and clearly stated that KEDIT will run on Windows 7 64 bit (presumably both 7 and KEDIT will run on a 32 bit processor).

So, good news so far.

I intend to buy another computer fairly soon. Then computer A will do its backup to disk space on computer B, and B to A. Main point: If computer A fails, then I still have computer B still working and with all the data on computer A. So, fix (or replace) computer A, copy the data back from B, and continue.

The reason I got a copy of Windows 7 is that it will be the OS I will run on my next computer, computer B. Then with computer B just sitting there, I will be able to do experiments in installation, configuration, system management and administration, etc. while computer A still has access to the Internet for Google, MSDN, various fora, etc.

Then via the Microsoft BizSpark program, I will install on computer B, on its own disk partition, the most recent, appropriately sized, copies of Windows Server, IIS, SQL Server, etc. That will be my Web server for my startup.

For now, my computer A with XP I hope will keep running until I get computer B running. Why? I'm concentrating on the rest of the software development for my startup and don't want to take a detour into more 'system management'.

Generally, though, the main way I have in mind to solve problems of software installation, configuration, compatibility, etc. is just to have a second computer (so that I will still have a working computer) to run experiments on until I discover what the situation is. E.g., I suspect that the way a high end user of, say, SQL Server gets installations done is just to have a computer with an appropriate version of Windows Server and then just install over and over until everything is smooth, document is, and hopefully automate it.

Net, I need a second computer. Soon.

I have a copy of Acronis 'True Image' or some such; maybe I should dig into it and get a 'true image' of my Windows 2000 partition in case it needs to be there in case the boot drive fails and I need to reinstall my Windows XP 'upgrade'. Then I will be able to reinstall my NTBACKUP image of my favorite XP boot partition. I.e., my computer has three hard drives, one for boot partitions, one for disk to disk backup, and one for the real work. I'm well enough backed up that if any one disk fails I will still be able to recover (at least if I grab a copy of the Windows 2000 partition).

> (2) Wonder if Windows 7 will run on my hardware with a 32 bit processor and a 1.8 GHz clock. E.g., I've not seen a statement from Microsoft on what hardware Windows 7 needs.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-...

I read it quickly; it was somewhat helpful. At one point they implied "if you like your XP applications then you can keep your XP applications" or some such promise. Good.