I bought a new to me Lenovo laptop without a COA or a hard drive so I
loaded XP. In spite of all of the rumors, once I loaded SP3 it linked
up to microsoft, authenticated and downloaded the 155 updates that are
out there for XP.
You do have to load SP3 tho. It will not connect without it.
The only trick was finding the drivers. This machine shipped with 7
and Lenovo did not support XP on all of the adapters. The seller gave
me a good head start with a detailed report of what was in it.
This may end up being a "TV" computer since it has an HDMI output