On Thu, 3 Apr 2014 09:57:57 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

| Planning for the end, I got out my backup drive,
| and put XP on it, with help from my computer
| wizzard.
|
| The Windows update page doesn't function with XP.
| I left the backup drive in last night, and there
| were 133 auto updates waiting for me in the morning.
|
| Now I've got my next hard drive, for when this one
| grows old and fails.
|

Good idea. But one thing you might want to consider:
You could have a new computer by then. In my experience,
XP can deal with waking up in a new computer except
for one thing: Incompatible motherboard chipset drivers
can cause a bluescreen that's nearly impossible to recover
from. You might want to save a copy of your current
motherboard drivers, then boot that backup one more time,
uninstall the drivers on it, and then shut down. If you
then have to restart in a new PC it will install generic
drivers until you can finish setting it up. (All of this
assumes, of course, that you have XP Pro or some other
version that can still be activated after being installed
to a new computer. If you have OEM XP you probably
won't be able to run it on a second computer, as it will
be tied to the original motherboard.)

The video chip is the only real killer, so delete the video driver
from the new drive - leaving it as basic VGA. It then will boot on any
motherboard (in my experience) - might not have sound, or USB, or
Network - but it will boot so you can install the required drivers.