Hi all!

Last week i have sucessfully installed winxp through the net using two pc's and the PXE environment. These are the steps i followed from colbaip.blogspot.com, In my case i'm using a desktop pc (192.168.1.11) and a laptop connected by a router (192.168.1.1), the desktop has the sources the laptop is the target. These are the steps:

In the Desktop PC

(1) Create two shared directories: "c:\ftp" and "c:\winxp", in the first one we put the files of the step 2, in the second one we copy the content of a Windows Xp Installation CD and additionally the file "Smartdrv" from here: http://www.alorda.jazztel.es/aol/download/smartdrv.zip

(2) Use the 3Com Boot Image Editor to make an .pxe menu file with the images: "Win98.img" *(floppy instalation disk) and the "Bart.img" (Dos network disk) from here: http://www.vegazone.com/alorda/Bart.zip and here: http://www.vegazone.com/alorda/Win98.zip

(3) Configure "Tftpd32" (http://tftpd32.jounin.net/download/tftpd_proxy.12.zip), and load the .pxe file. Remember that you need to especify the base directory and the DHCP configuration (ip pool starting adress, size of pool,boot file, DNS server, default router, mask and domain), here are my settings:

ip pool starting adress = 192.168.1.12
size of pool = 3
boot file = menu2.pxe
DNS server = 192.168.1.1
default router = 192.168.1.1
mask = 255.255.255.0
domain = CASA2

In the Laptop

(4) Boot from network using PXE (f10 or f12, perhaps you could need to configure the MBA) and choose the windows 98 option in the PXE menu.

(5) Use Fdisk command to create the partitions (fat32) and format the disk.

(6) Restart the Laptop and repeat the step 4 but using the Dos network disk. In the promt we write:


*We choose Map, a letter for the winxp shared folder, and the path, in my case: "\\pc1\winxp". Press enter and return to the command line. Then we write:



(7) Follow the windows instructions from "winnt", a DOS Windows Installer. After converting the partition to NTFS and copy the system files, perhaps you could need to fix the mbr (if you were using grub like me), then just enter again to the win98 disk using the pxe menu and type:



I hope that it helps you guys!

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I almost forgot it, the title for the post is: "Booting a booteable floppy raw image using PXE" because i can not boot using my .img raw floppy image of my toy OS.

It works if i restored it to an usb flash drive using WinImage. Normallty it boots my pc and the OS printed out a message. But using the 3Com to enter the .img to the PXE menu, it hangs up saying "Transferring image..." in the laptop.

Here is the OS toy image i used... http://www.4shared.com/file/ZXw0NAMI/a_babel.html

Someone have an idea?

Thanks in advance

Wait, so you were able to load your OS over the network via PXE? That's awesome. That'd be a great tutorial to add!