Can Windows XP run on Raspberry pi?

Question

I would like to run a windows xp OS on my raspberry. If I try to install it with Win32DiskImager would be able to use? Which version should I try?

Answer 1

TL;DR Yes it is possible to virtualize Windows XP on an ARM device such as Raspberry Pi.

For anyone saying that this isn't possible needs to re-evaluate what "possible" means. Just because it hasn't been done yet (which it has), it's not appropriate to say it's impossible. In fact, it's generally never a good idea to claim something as impossible.

That said, it IS entirely possible to run x86 systems on an ARM device if it meets the standard requirements. I have first hand experience with getting Mac OS X Mavericks running on an ARM HDMI stick, primarily aimed at running Android on a TV. This setup requires that QEMU be compiled and running with a specific configuration.

There are also guides that have ported Windows 95, 98, XP and other x86 system to run on many ARM devices.

One such guide can be found here

From the guide:

 Now you can run x86 based operating systems on your ARM device. 
 Now you can have full desktop windows/linux experience on your Android smartphones.

It should be noted that this guide was primarily written with an Android operating system in mind, however one with enough experience can get a minimal Linux OS running on the rPI, say Debian, Linux Mint or lubuntu and then attempt to get QEMU compiled.

Looking at the minimum system requirements of Windows XP and then comparing those to Raspberry Pi's specifications, at a glance I would say it's possible to virtualize XP. I don't know what kind of performance you could get and it might even prove to be unusable. However, it would be an interesting experiment to try.

To give you an idea of the steps that would be required, it would look something like this.

1. Get a linux distribution of your choice to run on RPI, like Debian, Ubuntu, etc.
2. Compile QEMU with whatever requirements that Windows XP needs to emulate. This step requires research on your part.
3. Virtualize Windows XP with a running version of QEMU and attach the video to the QEMU instance.
4. Most things in the OS should operate normally, however you may run into compatibility problems with hardware due to emulated conditions.
5. Note the limitations of running Windows XP, which is a very dated piece of software that has reached it's end of life. This means that newer modern web browsers, firewalls, anti-virus solutions and many more key pieces of software probably won't run properly, if it all.

Extras:

Here is a video tutorial of how to get QEMU running on the Pi.

Here are some reasons of why I think it could be possible.

• A YouTube video in German that displays Windows XP booting up in 20-some minutes on a Raspberry Pi.
• Eye witness accounts of running OSX Mavericks on an Android HDMI stick
• Several tutorials of running past OS's with QEMU virtualization (x86 to ARM)

Answer 2

The answer is no. The Raspberry Pi is powered by an ARM processor, and there is no ARM Windows version

Answer 3

You couldn't directly run Windows XP but you might be able to put it through an emulator. The only problem is that it would really slow.

Answer 4

I'm not interested in running Windows XP in particular, but I'm running an x86 Debian userland on my Pi 4, which allows running Windows programs via Wine.

The performance is certainly worse compared to running native ARM code, but it's not that bad. Here's a test with Exagear emulator:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.51-v7l+ #1333 SMP Mon Aug 10 16:51:40 BST 2020 i686 GNU/Linux
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=1000 run
sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark
...
Test execution summary:
    total time:                          7.5422s

Compared with:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.51-v7l+ #1333 SMP Mon Aug 10 16:51:40 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=1000 run
sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark
...
Test execution summary:
    total time:                          3.5249s

The performance gap becomes more apparent if the program in question tries to use hardware acceleration, e.g. the emulated x86 version of gltron only gives me about 10 fps, while the ARM version runs fine with 50+ fps.

Answer 5

You have not done research.

The minimum requirements for Windows XP are (from Microsoft Knowledge Base):

• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
• At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
• Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution
• Sound card

Raspberry Pi does not meet those requirements, due to the fact that the maximum Raspberry Pi specifications are (from Wikipedia):

So, to answer your question: no, you can't.

And please do more research in the future. Do a Google search for Can I run Windows XP on Raspberry Pi, you'll find many topics and answers to them, with the answer: no.