@michaelmurfy - It would appear to me that the OP is in Martinborough, and no longer in Ngakuta Bay - would helping out not be the perfect excuse to take your Tesla over the Remutakas?

@Ge0rge To be honest I am tempted and might just do that.

@OwenWatson I'll flick Foss and yourself an email shortly to grab more information. We may be able to work something out.

Update on the XP Issue: Thank you everyone for all your thoughtful comments on the problem facing this old codger, if and when my work machine fails.

Since asking for help my backup hard disk failed and required sending to Australia for file retrieval ($800). This affirms that hardware failure is a real problem. My XP work machine did fail some years earlier, but I was able to reinstall commercial software (Adobe, Office, etc) before support ceased. That cannot be done now.

One member of Geekzone kindly offered help setup a VM to solve my problem. However, he stopped communicating when my son-in-law from Munich visited and took over the task. I am very sorry that this appears to have offended the first gentleman, as I could certainly appreciate some ongoing local advice from time to time.

The current situation is very unsatisfactory. The C and D drives from the XP machine were cloned, and installed in another XP machine that was idle. The machine was transformed into a VM with magical access remotely in Munich for development. The current status is that all functions run extremely slowly. Even using the mouse is frustratingly slow. Although my son in law continues to work on the VM, I rather doubt it will ever be anything but a pale immitation of my original work machine. There is still the problem of getting commercial software to run. I am now wondering if a better solution is to change approach. Clone the C and D drives again. Put these drives in another suplus XP machine, and attempt to get the commercial software running by re-naming hardware serial numbers etc. I see this as a much simpler solution and the advantage is that everything should be as fast as my original machine.

 Is there anyone out there that could help me try this option please?

So I offered a whole lot of help and was never going to charge for my time or travel - started an email chain, explained to Foss my plan but basically felt I was fighting with everyone due to my desire to use VMWare Player, the son in law only wanted to use Opensource Software fully vetoing my plan (the current solution the son in law set up is based on QEMU running on Debian on old hardware) despite me explaining it won't offer great performance and they're better using a solution using off the shelf products that is proven to run well. Basically nobody listened to my advise and just ran with the rather janky sounding Opensource solution where Foss has to launch QEMU via a terminal (not a great user experience).

Don't get me wrong - I'm an opensource advocate as you all know but sometimes it is not the solution but I have very limited time to give also and this was sounding like it was going to become more and more of a support nightmare.

My solution would have taken images of everything, use the VMWare converter tool as many people recommended here (and I have used successfully multiple times) and create a virtual machine on one of his other more modern machines using only virtual disks that can also be easily backed up but even the above request is sounding like a bit of a nightmare to support. I had to in the end explain to both Foss and the son in law I can't provide any support and just had to walk away which sucks to have to do but as anyone in IT understands sometimes has to be done.

Too many cooks spoil the broth as it were.....

michaelmurfy:

 

So I offered a whole lot of help and was never going to charge for my time or travel - started an email chain, explained to Foss my plan but basically felt I was fighting with everyone due to my desire to use VMWare Player, the son in law only wanted to use Opensource Software fully vetoing my plan (the current solution the son in law set up is based on QEMU running on Debian on old hardware) despite me explaining it won't offer great performance and they're better using a solution using off the shelf products that is proven to run well. Basically nobody listened to my advise and just ran with the rather janky sounding Opensource solution where Foss has to launch QEMU via a terminal (not a great user experience).

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm an opensource advocate as you all know but sometimes it is not the solution but I have very limited time to give also and this was sounding like it was going to become more and more of a support nightmare.

 

My solution would have taken images of everything, use the VMWare converter tool as many people recommended here (and I have used successfully multiple times) and create a virtual machine on one of his other more modern machines using only virtual disks that can also be easily backed up but even the above request is sounding like a bit of a nightmare to support. I had to in the end explain to both Foss and the son in law I can't provide any support and just had to walk away which sucks to have to do but as anyone in IT understands sometimes has to be done.

 

It's not easy for me, but I am trying to teach myself not to care more about my clients systems than they themselves do. Sometimes people need to learn the hard way. I respect that not everyone is going to agree with me (but they will then be wrong!) or that there is more than one way to solve a problem, but it's not my first rodeo, and over 25 years I have learned a thing or two about the shortcuts that end up causing people more grief (and usually me, by extension). 

Like you, my time is very limited, and I value it, even if I am not charging for it, but I have frequently found time I give away, has little value to those who receive it.

I think you made the right call. I'd have done the same thing.

Have to agree with comments around using another XP-era machine. That sounds like the main issue.

What are the specs of that machine?

huckster: What are the specs of that machine?

It is pretty old:

XP Pro ver 2002 Service Pack 3
CPU Intel Pentium  CPU G840  2.8 GHz (2.7 GHz, 1.87 GB Ram
C drive 931 GB, 42 GB used
D drive 931 GB, 269 GB used.

Easy to turn into a virtual machine but as you know it is better said then done with transferring it to whole new hardware (plus - seeing the main concern is hardware failure I would never go there anyway). His main Windows 11 machine can run it no worries and I even mentioned to him he can disconnect networking from the virtual machine + backup the virtual disks to cloud storage, external drives etc to ensure hardware failure never strikes again and things are easy to get up and running again.

michaelmurfy:

 

Easy to turn into a virtual machine but as you know it is better said then done with transferring it to whole new hardware (plus - seeing the main concern is hardware failure I would never go there anyway). His main Windows 11 machine can run it no worries and I even mentioned to him he can disconnect networking from the virtual machine + backup the virtual disks to cloud storage, external drives etc to ensure hardware failure never strikes again and things are easy to get up and running again.

 

If there is a more modern Win 11 machine then, yes, I think you were on the right road - VM Player on that. 

networkn:

 

It's not easy for me, but I am trying to teach myself not to care more about my clients systems than they themselves do. Sometimes people need to learn the hard way. I respect that not everyone is going to agree with me (but they will then be wrong!) or that there is more than one way to solve a problem, but it's not my first rodeo, and over 25 years I have learned a thing or two about the shortcuts that end up causing people more grief (and usually me, by extension). 

 

100% this^

I'm the same, but I realised a long time ago "when I care more about something than those in charge, it's time to walk away".

It took me six months to walk away from a long term client this year but only a couple of hours to walk away from a prospective client. 

Hats off to @michaelmurfy for making the effort in the first place.

From my aged relative:

I really appreciate several people taking the time to give advice and
make comments on various alternative solutions. Sadly, much of the
dialogue is not easy for me to understand. Concerning the son in law -
it was not that simple for me to ignore "Leave it to me. I will do it"
Actually, it was more along the lines of "There is no point in
discussing details because it is beyond your knowledge". I am not
offended by that, because it's quite true. I was earlier advised by a
friend in Dunedin that he knew someone who could do this job if I
bought a new modern machine and cloned the two drives and sent them to
him. A simple koha of $1000 was suggested. That seemed fine, but when
the issue of Adobe and MS-Office came up, the offer was withdrawn.

So where am I up to? I have trepidation every day when I start my XP
machine that it will fail. There are warning signs because sometimes
it struggles to boot, requiring several attempts. Since last posting
my backup drive failed and had to be sent to Australia for file
retrieval, and cost $800

At this stage what do I want? I want a reliable backup machine that
looks and functions exactly like my existing machine. I am willing to
sell furniture etc to pay whatever cost might be involved. One
alternative is to find a commercial company or individual who can do
do the job, but no idea where to look.

In all the discussion on this issue, I have not see a clear statement
on why the VM option is better than simply cloning the two HD and
installing them on a second XP machine.

With thanks to all
Foss ZL2JKP

You need to choose someone to fix this for you and follow their advice. Don't involve anyone else, don't let others interfere. 

Someone very capable tried to help, wasn't even going to charge, and interference and not trusting the expert, caused them to walk away.

Most people who are 'good' are busy. They are happy to do 'good' sometimes even for a fraction of the 'real' cost, but you need to let them work.

I'd sincerely hope the machine you are concerned about is backed up every day if the situation is very important to you. If not, that is priority number 1.

I wouldn't touch this setup until it was cloned.