Kirsle.net
Created: August 13 2025
Some cool links and modern resources for running "retro" operating systems (including Windows XP) in virtual machines and really fun projects I've found to revive them for the modern Web or restore legacy old services from the era.
On this page you'll find:
Table of Contents
If you don't have compatible physical hardware, you can run these retro OS's on your existing PC a variety of ways (virtualization or emulation).
Here are some of the best options I know, in order of best/easiest onward.
VirtualBox may be the best (easiest, most featureful) solution for running operating systems as old as Windows 2000 and it you can run it on Windows, Linux or MacOS.
As of August 13, 2025 the latest version of VirtualBox (7.1.12) still has "Guest Additions" support for Windows NT (which is Windows 2000, XP, and newer versions of Windows). Guest Additions bring the ability to share folders, clipboard and USB devices with the guest VM easily.
I've had good luck getting Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98 running on VirtualBox as well, with Internet "just working" on Windows 98 depending on the network card I told VirtualBox to emulate. The settings that worked for me will be mentioned with each OS below.
If you run Linux you can use its built-in virtualization tools and the Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) GUI to configure them.
This is the very best way to run Linux guests as VMs, and I've had very good luck using it with recent versions of Windows (such as Windows 10 & 11).
It has some features like "sharing USB devices" built-in, but it doesn't have "Guest Additions" to the degree of what VirtualBox has. Direct folder sharing for example only works with Linux guests. So to get files into and out of your VM you'll need to use other methods (such as regular network protocols like FTP, or by CD-ROM and floppy disk images mounted to the VM).
It can be challenging to get retro OS's to run well at all on it, such as Windows 3.1 or 98. Modern OS's anticipate being virtualized, and retro ones lack the drivers for the simulated network cards, etc.
PCem is a lower level x86 emulator with loads of options. You can configure exact CPU types and other components, and it emulates them very accurately, down to the speed at which they will run.
This is useful for playing old videogames, which relied on the CPU clock speed to set their frame rate, which run way too fast on modern CPUs. Most Virtual Machine options will use your real CPU making these games unplayable.
However, PCem can be very finicky to set up. I recommend Googling for specific guides to install certain operating systems.
DOSBox is an MS-DOS emulator for all operating systems that is geared towards making it easy to run MS-DOS games on modern computers.
Windows 3.1 was actually just a program for MS-DOS, so you can install it inside DOSBox the same as you would any other DOS game. It works okay on DOSBox. Read my blog post about Windows 3.1 for details.
The ISO of Windows XP Pro - Service Pack 3 for x86 can be found on the Internet archive: https://archive.org/details/WinXPProSP3x86
The default settings in VirtualBox when you set up a Windows XP machine should work fine.
Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/windows-98-se-isofile
Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/win-95-osr-2
The disk images to install it can be found on the Internet Archive:
With virtual machines, it is fairly easy to get a Windows 98 or Windows XP computer with Internet connectivity that "just works." (Windows 95 or 3.1 often require extra drivers, and I've never managed to get them online).
But the web browsers for these old systems can't cope well with our modern Web: almost every website uses https encryption, and the old browsers don't support our modern algorithms (the ones they did support, like SSL, have been deprecated as being insecure). So you would be limited to only visiting insecure HTTP websites, which are few and far between nowadays.
Surprisingly, http://www.google.com still works on Internet Explorer 6.0 without encryption. It serves up a very simple HTML web page and searches can be run, though, most results can't be visited directly.
Fortunately, there are some modern solutions to this problem.
Supermium brings a modern Chromium web browser to ancient operating systems like Windows XP.
If you'd rather stick to period correct browsers like IE 6 or Firefox 3.0, some cool ways are:
My Recommendation: prefer to use Supermium where you can, as having modern https encryption for the Web is a good thing.
Some sites linked on this page deliberately support insecure HTTP for old browsers. I'll note the ones I know of below with an HTTP after their link. But if they involve logging in with passwords, do prefer to use Supermium so you can have encryption.
Where to get old software and drivers:
Modern services to revive old programs who had their official servers shut down:
Some links to "new old" nostalgic websites (modern browsers only):
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