XP Install Using PXE/Imaging.

[Guest]

If anyone can figure this out, they will be my hero

I have an older Toshiba notebook that does not have the capibility to boot
from a CD-Rom Drive. So I thought to myself, fine I'll just grab the 6 Floppy
Disk XP Pro SP2 set off MS.com and it will detect my CD drive. No luck. Its a
PCMCIA based drive that doesnt seem to be working.

I borrowed an External Plextor 48x24x48U USB CD Drive from work and tried to
boot off it and use the 6 disk floppy set. Unfortunately there is only 1 USB
port and the floppy drive I'm using is USB based. No luck with that option.

I installed VMWare 5 on my desktop PC and created a virtual XP Pro SP2
install. After the XP install I created a partition on the virtual hard drive
and created an image (sysprep'ed and all) of the XP install onto it using
PowerQuest Deploy Center. I created a boot disk and added it to my PXE server
listing and sucessfully imaged the laptop. Unfortunately I cant boot into
Windows after imaging. It just hangs before reaching the colorful XP boot
screen. (Hangs at the black and white loading bar) IRQ problems I'd assume.

Thoughts I've had:

1) Make a virtual floppy set of the XP setup diskettes and use PXE, hoping
that it will see the USB cd drive. (Cant figure out how to use PXE with more
that one floppy image)

2) Create an image that will work. I can image the laptop without a problem,
I just have to create a HAL independant one or repair the existing image that
hangs on boot up.

3) Chuck the POS off of a roof

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Paul Krevs
Neowin.net

 

[Guest]

You say you can't boot from the CDROM drive, so I suggest getting a USB hub,
getting a floppy that can recognize the USB-based CDROM drive, and then
mounting the CDROM drive and installing XP.

Other choices:
1. Boot from floppy, run NIC drivers so you can put the machine on the
network, and install XP via the network from within DOS. Slow, but it works.

2. Take out the 2.5" HDD and put it into a desktop. Copy XP's i386 folder.
Put 2.5" HDD back into desktop and install XP.
3. (I assume the laptop can't do PXE-boot, otherwise, just set up a RIS
server.)
4. Argon (sp?) makes a floppy that can support PCMCIA cards. It might be
limited to theirs (their PCMCIA NICs), but it's another alternative...

 

[Jérôme GUERS]

Hi

Just have a look to http://ani.sourceforge.net
That's an easy-to-use network installation service.

Tell us what you think about this

PaulK wrote in
(e-mail address removed)