Windows XP x64

If they say it will run without your having bought an XP licence then the answer is, "No".

If they have altered the ISO to make it run without proper activation then they could have done anything else to it at the same time.

Denis

ashramnavivi said:

to play some older games

Why don't these games work on Windows 10?

Did you install older DirectX and VC++ required by those games?

ashramnavivi said:

I'm planning to download Windows XP x64 bit to play some older games on virtual machine
Windows XP Professional 64 Bit ISO Free Download [SP3] - Softlay
Is it safe to download the .iso file from this site?

The main reason Windows XP x64 didn't make it the first time, was that no one wrote drivers for it.

ashramnavivi said:

... I'm not sure if it's safe to download from that site and that's all I want to know ...

Answered in the very first reply.

Try3 said:

If they say it will run without your having bought an XP licence then the answer is, "No".

Denis

ashramnavivi said:

It's not about the drivers, it's about because I want to experiment on it and play some really old games and other stuff, but I'm not sure if it's safe to download from that site and that's all I want to know, another thing why I want to use it is because it's not resource hog like a Windows 10, and I can run it in background

If there are no Windows XP 64 bit drivers for w/e hardware you have... it won't run on your hardware.





/edit

For my computer, built in May 2020, by me... here are the available drivers for my motherboard and video card.










My motherboard, has no drivers for anything except Windows 10 64 bit.
And you can see that even my video card couldn't run Windows XP 64 bit.



I just downloaded that Windows XP 64 bit and scanned it with Bitdefender Internet Security 2020.
It comes up clean... BUT, that's just the ISO image.
There's no way of knowing if it stays clean during/after install.

If you plan to run it *only* in virtual machine and *only* to play games and nothing else, what could go wrong right?

Surely there exist various attack vectors to compromise host OS (Your main Windows), because if host OS can compromise guest OS (virtual XP) then the opposite is likely as well.

For the second scenario there is a known defense:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...-v/ba-p/372179

For the first scenario you also need some kind of defense, because that Windows XP you want to download is 100% not trusted.

Your issue is not whether guest OS (Windows XP) could do that because that's obvious, instead your issue is whether you can play games without degrading security?
And whether you need internet connection in virtual XP?

Good luck, I'm not educated to answer you these questions, but one is for sure, that XP is not trusted and nobody can grant you otherwise. (maybe XP is clean is not acceptable, it's either clean or it's not trusted)