Xp will go in, and the drivers are going to be there...
All you need for benching that thing:
Chipset
Display
Ricoh or SDcard
I would strip the cover plate off, disable the touchpad in bios and remove it, the modem, speakers, and wifi card. Make sure the battery is not being used.
If yours has a second SATA port, then you might be able to run raid0... but only if it will run the intel matrix crapola. Not the greatest raid, but better than single drive..
After all that, the motherboard and chip should be exposed so you can cool it how ever you want.
EDIT: In order to get the top plate off iirc, you have to remove the monitor, but can remount it after the plate is removed.