First of all, I'm not a computer scientist, so please don't be too harsh with me with respect to mistakes...
I've got a spectrometer which communicates via Ethernet (IPX) with a computer. Now this instrument has a software package (on a USB drive) provided by the manufacturer, which only runs on Windows XP. Furthermore, the manufacturer has supplied me with a sort of emergency system, which is essentially an installation (USB) drive that installs Windows XP as well as all the necessary software packages.
Now the computer (HP Compaq DC5800) I am supposed to use, has nothing installed on it, and I also don't have a Windows XP installation disk, whence I'm left with installing the "emergency" system from the USB drive. I've therefore booted from the USB drive and completed the installation. The problem I'm left with is, that this system (Windows XP plus the spectrometer's software package) either doesn't have or can't install the drivers necessary to use the on-board network card. I've now tried several things, which unfortunately all didn't resolve the issue: Firstly, I downloaded drivers from the HP support site and tried to install those. Secondly, I bought a new network card (UGREEN PCI express) plugged it into the motherboard and tried to install the driver from the CD provided by the manufacturer. Both things didn't work.
My next idea now would be to install a Linux distribution on the computer, and then install the "emergency" system in a virtual box: This way, the Linux system communicates with one of the two network cards and provides an interface the emergency system can cope with.
My questions would be: (a) Have I overlooked a possible solution? (b) Is the idea of doing it via a virtual machine promising, and if it is, what distribution and what VM should I use? (I've used Ubuntu and Debian Linux before, although not on a level where I could resolve driver issues, and I've never used a VM before)
I'd be really grateful for any help, as otherwise I'm left with buying a used PC that has Windows XP on it and comes with God knows what kind of problems...