My router has a pretty descent firewall so i feel like it should be safe? Maybe. Obviously I won’t be signing into any online accounts or anything like that on the XP machine. Is this a bad ideas? Obviously using Windows in general is a bad idea but I’m sort of limited by the hardware here.
Are you starting fresh with XP or using an old crusty install. If you start fresh you should be fine. Just don’t browse the internet on it, or run sketchy ass software on it. And turn it off when you’re done. Behind NAT the only way for your device to get infected is for something else on the network infect it.
Also FYI it’s probably not going to work with your WiFi. You’re probably going to need to be hard wired. Most built in network cards from windows XP era machines don’t understand WPA2, and WPA3 is allegedly backwards compatible, but it REALLY hates older devices that barely speak WPA 2.
I have an old router that I installed DD-WRT on that I use for my old devices. I have the WiFi power dropped down to the bare minimum, and it barely leaves the room. Then I have an open WiFi network with MAC address filtering, that automatically turns off after a few hours of no devices. I can turn it on with the WPS button. That gets me a relatively not entirely insecure wireless network that I can use on devices all the way back on my iBook G3 or earlier.
Just remember, you are the biggest threat to your network.
There is a lot of wisdom here, but be cautious…
“Back in the day” (when xp was still relevant), I installed a VM with xp on the cooperate LAN. …as it took eons to install all the patches and updates, this turned into a multi-day task. I didn’t browse the internet or do anything (because the patches were still installing/rebooting/ect).
When I came back to the office, the next day, the networking on the VM was disabled and I got a message from the local IT guy saying that my VM was part of a botnet and was spreading worms, so they had to quarantine it (by disabling the networking).
I literally did nothing with it, other than install updates. I assume someone in the office had a worm and it infected my VM during the night.
…so if you’re playing with xp (or any unsupported version of windows) - be careful.
My guess was that it was the updates that did the thing. I think I remember there being an issue up to Win 7 where malicious parties could advertise malware as available updates (under win7 this was only a problem if you didn’t let it select and download manually).
.…classic Microsoft :facepalm: