Linux is not an option because software I need professionally or personally is only available in a Windows environment. Wine 1.0 goes a long way to closing the gap but it's still not close enough for my requirements. I've long been a believer that one sources the software to suit the task and then sources the hardware to run the software. Currently the best fit is Windows based software.
If your machine is powerful enough, Windows inside a VM stack such as KVM, VirtualBox or VMWare Server is a good option. Performance is pretty good these days, the big issue is always RAM. I'm only pointing this out because it may let you get past the disk size restriction.
I'm not trying to bypass license restrictions. I'm just trying to find an unwanted new or secondhand copy of Windows XP or Windows Vista so that I can reinstall my ailing PC. I'm not asking for charity as I am more than willing to pay a reasonable price for it.
I floated the question in here because this list has a large number of people on it who have access to a wide variety of software, hardware and knowledge and I thought there may be one or two who would be able to help me.
That's fine, however if you're not interested in bypassing license restrictions, then purchasing a second hand OEM copy of windows is not an option. A second hand full copy, on the other hand, is fine. And yeah, it's probably "OK" for you to just buy someone's OEM copy anyway, but you need to be aware that it's still in breach of license. If it's just installing windows that's the issue, you could try this: Install windows to a small partition Apply all service packs plug disk into another machine running windows grow the partition to fill the disk, expand the windows partition You might have some luck booting from a linux live cd instead of disk 3, eg using gnuparted or similar, however I'm not sure how well they work regarding NTFS partitions yet. Ubuntu seems to manage to shrink NTFS partitions OK, so maybe it'll work fine.