... except it isn't.

But I do feel your anxiety.  WinXP was solid and so was WiNT, it's predecessor. And so was Win7. And so was...

I still have several old systems with some those OS's still on them in the proverbial closet, all pretty much for the same reason.

And how much time have you put into this so far?  At some point, it's really just better to move on. You might consider what the actual cost is, not just monetarily, but in your TIME, to sorta get it working. And this Sword of Damocles issue will always there you know, even if you are lucky this time.

And also, NOT being able to take advantage of numerous hard and software advances that simply allow things to work better.

Just my 2¢