What To Do With XP Machine After April Of 2014

Is there any way to securely network an old XP computer (to Windows 7, 8) after its EOL (end of life)?

I hate to just let the thing sit unused. I have a lot of old files on it.

Would it make sense to turn the old machine into a home server of sorts?

 

I have a Computer from 2000 that I upgraded from Win XP SP3 32bit to Win 7 Ultimate 32 bit. Click on this link it will what you will need to up grade. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20

 

Thanks, lj50, but my hardware is not up to snuff for anything newer than XP.

I guess I could take the harddrive (EIDE) out of the old machine and use it for storage, but I would need an SATA adapter so it would run on the new board. Not sure what to do right now. Is there a way to securely connect XP to Windows 7 without an Ethernet cable?

 

Thanks, Steve. I read bits of that article, but I will re-read it again.

 

It's a five year old Western Digital Caviar.

Is there another way to link my XP machine to my Windows 7 unit without a broadband cable? If so, that would make XP unable to access the web?

 

Depending on the hardware, you can use it as a file server. If you upgrade the hard disk, it may serve you well for some more time.

Check out FreeNAS or Zentyal. You can also load an all purpose Linux distro like Ubuntu.

 

Interesting.

Thanks for posting.