Am I correct in the following assumption ?
When my XP machine loses a hard drive or video card I am likely doomed ? XP was the first O/S that was keyed by an activation code to the hardware in the box. So significant hardware changes always needed a new authorization process, now shut down for years.
Nothing like perfectly good software killed by hardware change-out.
I recommend that before your XP machine's hardware dies, you get another hardware box, put free Linux on it, install either free VMware Workstation Player or VirtualBox virtualization software, and run a "P-to-V" (physical to virtual) conversion on your XP hardware. That will make a copy of it that is a VM (virtual machine).
At that point the old hardware doesn't matter -- you run the VM on your new hardware.
Yeah, it's a somewhat technical process, but it will save your XP computer, and then backup and restore are simply a file copy (of the VM image). You'll be glad you did.