I have an old lap top which I use in the shed/workshop and have had to reinstall XP on it, a perfectly legit copy I bought years ago from PC World with the Key. I use this computer because if it is damaged its no great loss. The problem is that XP requires authentification otherwise it ceases to work after a while. As XP is years old, I can not do this on line, is there a work around on this.

Geoff

You could try a download from this site

https://www.productkeysfree.com/2016/10/windows-xp-product-keys-free.html

I've used a similar product for Win 7.

Apparently the online option is a problem because the version of TLS that XP supports has been deprecated for some time and is not available on Microsoft's servers - including their activation servers! However, activation by phone should still work.

What software do you use on the laptop? An alternative is to use some other free OS instead?