I find it really curious when experts assure us that XP is dead (or nearly so). Just because Microsoft chooses not to issue updates doesn't mean that XP will shrivel up and go away. Of course Microsoft *hopes* people will abandon XP ... but one-third of all personal computers still use XP.
DOS-based software runs on XP. One has to use DOSbox or equivalent on Win 7 or newer to run these legacy DOS-based applications which are very important to some users, commercial users. It is all well and good to tell these people to switch to "modern" application software, but porting a perfectly-good trouble-free application to quite-dissimilar application software is a hard and expensive process. There continue to be press stories of commercial systems that have crashed after "upgrades".
But Microsoft would go bankrupt if they didn't bring out new, NEW versions fairly frequently.
The Linux-USB suggestion from aditya104 sounds like a good answer to the OP's problem.
Last edited by seacue; 11th July 2013 at 23:35.