With all the useless junk windows is running, it is likely to be far better to run Ubuntu linux and Virtualbox (VM) and then run any flavor of windows or more than one flavor!
I have some older games (The Dig and Dreamcatcher Interactive [good for the kiddies: non-violent] games) that only run under win98 so this is my method of choice. As well, there is plenty of help in the Ubuntu forums to get it all working.
For me it is an experiment (VM) since I bought a new system and got stuck with Vista (garbage). Besides, the new machine is a Quad-core and I am curious to see how well VM will perform compared to the same setup on a single-core (the old machine).