Ultra_DTA: I'm really wanting to set up a PC to play mostly older titles that I have. I love finding forgotten games or software at thrift stores and such. Obviously the biggest thing is that I no longer have a pc with Windows XP. I'm wondering if I would be able to use a virtual machine and have success with these 90s/early 2000 titles, or would it just be best to pick up an older PC with XP already installed.
Buy a second-hand old PC with XP installed, if you really have such old games that don't work fine on your current newer PC. Of course you have to make sure the system fully works and is not about to break down. Depending on old systems is of course always a bit of a dead end, they WILL die at some point, and it will become increasingly harder to find replacement parts or PCs. For now there's abundance of suitable older PCs sold, I guess. I bought one too last year for like 20€ when I stupidly broke my similar old retro PC. No one is making new old PCs to replace those which break down.
In my experience the virtual machines (like Windows XP running inside VMWare) are not worth it for gaming purposes. Especially since you are trying to run original retail games, it is the CD copy protection that those virtual machines may have issues with. For instance, when I tried to run Wheel of Time in a VMWare session, I recall it had issues detecting the CD while playing, even though the CD was original. Apparently the CD emulation layer or whatnot of VMWare + Windows XP didn't like the copy protection used with the game, or then it was something else.
When I applied a noCD crack to that game, then I was able to play the game on that session. Kinda. It ran, but there was something wrong with the graphics (not fully sure if they were running 3D accelerated or in SW mode, it was kinda like in between), and the mouse aim was broken, making the game mostly unplayable.
I tried some other games too, e.g. the GOG versions of Gothic (unplayable IIRC, barely ran), and Gorky 17 (this actually ran playably which was nice, but only in software mode IIRC).
I really hope emulated Windows 98SE/XP/7 environments will become reality at some point, a bit like DOSBox and WinUAE. People can play old Amiga and DOS games (even with Roland MT-32 music and 3Dfx support!) without depending to the original old hardware, I wish the same sometime happens to older Windows games. I know it is far more problematic to come up with WinBox with full DirectX support and such than DOSBox, both for legal and technical reasons, but one can always dream.
Also, Linux with WINE does sound somewhat promising too, at least to get some games working. Maybe I should install Linux Mint on the side of the ASUS so that I get more experience with WINE regarding gaming. So far I've used Linux on so old PCs that it doesn't make much sense to try to find out how well Windows games run on them.