Thanks James,

So, best order would be XP2 => XP3 => Updates => Drivers => AV& local FW => Progs and their updates.

Tarun, thanks for pointing out my terminological error stemming from a slip of the memory rather than keyboard. In 2009, I'd downloaded ImgBurn for slistreaming, but not installed it as the project was deferred because the benefits of doing it looked dubious. However, ImgBurn looks a useful utility, and your recommendation carries weight to trust it. And just having revisited the ImgBurn website, I was reminded of how their revenue stream works.

HDD changes etc start tomorrow. Tally-Ho!

Left the work-machine as is, and did a practice run of above procedure by cobbling together some old bits and new bobs to make what has become superior system in a beige box, then loaded a spare licenced virgin XP2 from a sealed official MS CD, then did the XP3 thing and then the Wupdates. And all went well. The updates installed surpisingly quickly. Thanks to contributors for guidance.

:)

Thanks for the feedback!

On older hardware updates install up to twice as fast when there is no AV running.

As about 100 updates are needed to bring XP SP3 fully up-to-date, that's a significant time saving.

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