virtualbox.org

Hi,
Newbie has second hand dell optiplex 170L running Xubuntu 14.04, previously OEM XP3 now nuked with no disk to reload.
Would like to buy cheap XP disk on Ebay and load into VB but don't know if used OEM versions would force a disk format thus losing my current kit. Any help much appreciated.
Thanks

An XP installer running in a VM can't affect your host in any way. That's what being a Virtual Machine means. When it formats and partitions a disk it is a virtual disk (corresponding to a file on your host) that actually gets formatted and partitioned.

p.s. The 4.3.34-Ubuntu refers to the Ubuntu fork of VirtualBox. We don't support forks here, only the official release which you can find in the download area. Please fix that before asking any more questions on this site. In fact you might also consider choosing something more recent than 4.3.34. If you want to stick with the Ubuntu fork then you should ask for support on the Ubuntu forums.

Got it - thanks