[all variants] Virtualization of physical hardware

I need some inspirational help to get started. I'm working on a project where after trying many different things, it seems that a licence to some expensive software (Windows XP system in a business environment, can't switch without spending lots of money) is assigned to the old PC's hardware. What I'd like to do is to create a virtual machine that on the software level emulates/virtualizes nearly all the physical hardware on the machine, and the rest of the stuff, I'll look in to doing pass through via the bios to the VM (I'll order a new PC if the recycled PCs here won't do it).

Is there any good tools to get me started? Is VMware the only option available?