I think the true error here is that I needed to divide the size of the string by 2 to pass to the wstring constructor.

e.g.:
Code:
   string test2 = getstring();
   wstring name2 = wstring((wchar_t*)test2.data(), test2.size()/2);
since the wstring has mutlibyte chars. make sense?

Regards,
Ellay K.