If you are a developer or IT professional with a Visual Studio/MSDN subscription, you can download official, untouched Windows XP ISOs directly from Microsoft’s private servers. This is the only 100% legal, direct-from-source method.
This is the #1 recommendation for 99% of users.
Recommendation: Always download . It includes a decade of patches and has the broadest driver support.
This isolates the old OS from your main hardware and the internet. : Use Rufus to flash the ISO onto a USB drive.