Win2000 Installation without floppy or cd drive

[Gary]

I have 7 PC's used in a non-profit internet cafe at our
facility (Seafarers' House). They have Win2000 as an O/S.
I want to put a Fresh installation on these machines in an
attempt to clean the years of junk downloaded by our
clients, who are crew from freighters and cruise ships
from all over the world. After I get a clean PC, I want to
install a product such as Deep Freeze which will remove
any files / installs done on the PC every time it is
rebooted. My problem is these PC's do NOT have a Floppy or
CD drive.

Question: Without a Server with RIS how can I install a
new O/S? I thought maybe I could use Partition Magic to
create a new partition and copy the I386 folder (across
the net) from a remote mounted Win2000 Install CD to the
new Partion on a PC's "C" drive. Then do the install from
the new partition to one I create during the install - is
that possible and will it work?

Any other ideas / comments would be appreciated.

Thanks,

-gary

 

[Jetro]

If the BIOS supports a boot from USB floppy drive, this drive would be the
minimal option. Better if a boot from USB CDROM is supported. Next option -
dismount hard disks and perform setup on any regular desktop.

 

[Bilbo]

I'm facing the exact same problem: doing a clean Win2k
install on a PC that lacks internal floppy & cd drives.
My BIOS appears to support booting from a USB CDROM, and
my USB CDROM does appear in the BIOS's boot list, but the
PC still won't boot from the USB CDROM, so I'm wondering:
are all USB CDROMs 'bootable' devices? If not, how do I
determine if my particular USB CDROM is bootable or not?
Also, if my CDROM is not 'bootable' and I am forced to do
a floppy boot, how do I go from the floppy boot to an
install from CDROM? I imagine I need to use the floppy
disk that came with the CDROM, but what exactly do I need
to do with it?

Thanks.

If the BIOS supports a boot from USB floppy drive, this drive would be the
minimal option. Better if a boot from USB CDROM is supported. Next option -
dismount hard disks and perform setup on any regular

desktop.

 

[Jetro]

Regarding the hardware issues check the manufacturer's site.
Having an FDD, you can either use setup diskettes or, without a CDROM drive,
connect to any shared network resource at least.