Can the Age of Mythology CD cause problems on a Windows XP box?

Hi,

My kid brother just obtained a pirated copy of the Age of Mythology CD
set here in New Delhi. He wants me to allow him to install it on our
brand new Windows XP Professional box. I have no experience with any
games, least of all Microsoft games. I therefore want to ask the people
on this forum what kind of problems I can expect if he starts playing
this game on a regular basis.

The specifications of my PC are:
Pentium 4 with 2.66GHz clock speed and 533MHz bus speed
512MB RAM, plenty of hard disk space (80GB)
with no special graphic card like PCI Express installed.

Specifically, I would like to know what problems can a pirated copy can
cause; what kind of software-related issues should I plan for in
advance, (any hardware related issues as well?). On my side, I want to
use the PC for playing around with XP Professional and some development
in VC++ and VB.

Thanks in anticipation of some enlightenment,
Hemanta