Wow, ok: thanks for your fast response Dunfir.

So... if I hunt around on Ebay, then for not too expensive, I can actually buy an XP product key that will make this XP-pro machine (AKA: the "server" for this company), run in virtualization?

If so, then the small company I am assisting will have no hesitancy in purchasing that product key.

Not sure if you might have any hints I might want to look out for, when purchasing an XP product key on eBay?

Also, just as a tangent, but I'm kinda shocked that the world's hackers never found a work around to this product key thing, in Windows XP?

Essentially, this small company fully paid for their Microsoft licensing many years ago, in the XP era.

And now they have fully paid for their new upgrade licensing to Windows 7 and 8...

The only thing they want, is to just be able to run an image of one of their XP servers, 3 to 5 years in the future, in case the government taxation department needs more data.

So I'm kinda shocked Microsoft doesn't have a way of supporting such clients (with only a bare-minimal need to access an old XP server).

It really does reflect badly on Microsoft, because the managers of this small company I'm working with are cursing Microsoft, who is the culprit in them not being able to access financial data in the future, even though they've really paid a lot of money to Microsoft in licensing fees already.

Also... I'm kinda shocked that no hackers around the world, have really bypassed this frustrating situation either, and allowed companies in situations like this to access their old data, from the Windows XP days, just in case they need it once or twice in the future?

Anyways... sorry for the rant!