Hi there,
I currently have to reinstall my old Toshiba Laptop (WinME) and like to put XP on. It turned out that the DVD-ROM drive has problems reading CDs, so the installation left me with a blank C: drive and is unable to read beyond a certain point on the CD. (The CD works just fine on another machine).
It came to my mind, that it should bepossible to boot the machine via network (Bios option is available and the net-interface is PXE able).
Has somebody done this before or is there some pieces of info anywhere?
I'd have two more machines available to act as server: on under XP Pro and one under XP Home (unfortunately no Win Server avaliable).

I've never done that before, and I could not find any usefull information in MS KB or elsewhere, besides the statement "It's possible but not explaind here".

So before I go off scretching bits and pieces together I'd like to ask y'all if there is some info. Maybe this is a topic worth a tutorial...?

Thx

You'll need a network bootable disk with smartdrv on it.

Boot, map a network drive to a share containing the installation files, execute "smartdrv", change directory to i386, then "winnt".

That's the basic rundown. If you're unfamiliar with DOS commands, it can be very confusing at first, but I can give instructions so long as they're followed ad verbatim.

dont know about 'kptarcher' but i would'nt mind gettin a run down on the process. i'was tryin to sort somthing like this out awhile back but gave up coz it got to complicated, for the time i had availible.

also where do i get a copy of smartdrv?

cheers

spikes

smartdrv is an ms-dos command.
What you could do depending on how big your hd is, would be to copy the entire xp disc onto a partition.
To do this you would need a bootable floppy with the cd/DVD-rom driver on it along with another msdos command called fdisk.
the bootable floppy can be obtained(as long as you have a blank floppy) from www.bootdisk.com. many other things can be got from here that might be usefull.
however if you really really insist on using the network to install the os then get yourself a pot of coffee and goto this website. it details the basics & why.
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6268-1054824.html

Hi Dear I am Waqar

I need some help on network boot issue.

I am installing windows 2000 server, active directory, but the client is not boot from my server. Please send me the details of components are require for booting.

with thanks
waqar Ahmed
wiky_11@yahoo.com