[lotuseclat79]

I have a dual-boot Grub based computer with Fedora Core 3 (FC3) Linux from Red Hat and Windows XP Pro SP2 loaded onto separate disks respectively.

I am about to attempt an XP Repair Install from the OEM WinXP Pro SP2 CD for the Windows XP Pro SP2 platform. If all goes well, I will have to reinstall Windows updates applied since initial installation date.

I have downloaded the following onto my FC3 Linux platform - Windows XP SP2 updates from: http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/index.html which has most all of what I need in terms of security updates, optional WinXP updates and Internet Explorer related cumulative updates.

I used the following commands to transfer the updates from my Linux desktop folders to CD-RW:

$ cd Desktop
$ mkisofs -r -v -J -l -o ./winxpupdts_cd.iso ./WinXPUpdates ./InternetExplorer ./OptionalWinXP
$ cdrecord -eject -v speed=8 dev=ATAPI:0,1,0 ./winxpupdts_cd.iso

As I understand it, the encoding was in UTF-8 to the CD-RW disc on the FC3 Linux platform.

Will WinXP Pro SP2 be able to properly handle the UTF-8 encoding or is there anything (download or registry tweaks) that need to be done to get the Windows Updates correctly installed unsing the UTF-8 encoded ISO disc or will it just plain not work at all?

Tia,

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

On the Linux computer, I ran the Linux diff command against each downloaded file on hard disk and the corresponding file written on the CD-RW disc, and they all checked out without any binary differences.

I suppose the UTF-8 encoding may apply more to the filename space than the downloaded executables - at least I am hoping.

The plan is now to copy each file on the CD-RW disc to hard disk after WinXP Pro SP2 can be resurrected from the dead via a WinXP Repair Install, and hopefully, be able to install each update in that way prior to accessing the Internet.

-- Tom