LAN O/S install

M

masterosok

Gawd
Joined
Apr 1, 2008
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I have a small Toughbook laptop that was given to me a while ago, preloaded with WinXP and recently I have been having some performance issue with the laptop and I want to reformat and install XP clean.... but the laptop doesn't have CD-ROM drive and will not boot from USB. The only way I can see to install an OS on it, is via LAN install which iI know it does support.

I am curious what software I could use to accomplish this. I'm pretty sure it uses PXE, but I would have to check. I don't want to setup a RIS and I have heard there are application you can use to install an OS image over your LAN without doing so I am just not sure what software to use. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
 
Usually when you install XP over a network you have to do it through a Distribution Server that runs on Windows 2003 which is kinda a pain to setup. I think theres ways of doing via a flash drive I've heard of but you'd have to research it.
 
I heard you can do this with Ghost? Is there a way to do it with out the bootable floppy ghost usually requires?
 
either way you look at it your going to need some type of bootable media to install the OS. I've heard of using a USB Flash drive before but have never tried it. I'm sure theres some ghetto ways of doing it like hooking up the laptops drive to a pc and install but it wont be that stable.
 
You can pull the hard drive, use a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter (or USB adapter) to hook it up to desktop and copy the set up files to the hard drive.

You could partition it from Windows with NTFS for most of it and leave a small FAT32 partition to hold the set up files. You can then make the drive DOS bootable, and run winnt from the i386 folder when it's back in the laptop.
 
I can copy the setup files over the network.. if i needed too... Any hints on how to make the drive dos bootable?
 
Get a boot disk image from http://www.bootdisk.com/ Select a non-windows based image. Extract it and use Nero to burn a bootable CD, selecting the extracted file as the boot disk image. Boot from the CD and run these commands with only the optical drive and laptop drive plugged in:

fdisk /mbr
sys c:

You may need to run fdisk separately and make sure the FAT32 partition is set active, changing it if necessary. The XP set up will change the active partition during installation. Hopefully you created the NTFS partition first or you may wind up with XP installed on D:.

Move the hard drive back to the laptop and it should boot to a DOS prompt where you can run winnt in the i386 folder to start set up.
 
is there a way to do so without a CD or Floppy? If not I can probably pick-up the adapter you mentioned and try it that way.
 
Its cool, I found a 2.5" HD enclosure here at work... I should be able to get it connected and working with that.. Thanks for all the help.
 
Im running into a snag here an I'm not sure how to proceed...

First I am having trouble making the boot disk... I burned the image but it doesnt boot... I made sure that my cd-rom is set first in the boot order but it doesn't boot. I have made dos book disks before but I forgot how... I was able to find an old one that I had but it doesnt have usb driver support on it so I will not see the laptop hardrive in my usb enclosure so I can run the fdisk command on it..

Can anyone let me know exactly how to burn a disk that has usb driver support for my enclosure ..

Is running the fdisk /mbr sys c: going to allow the laptop HD itself to be bootable and recognize the 2nd partion with the install files?
 
Try putting it to boot from USB instead of CDROM. See if that works. I'm kinda unfamiliar in this area for USB / cdrom booting but if I find something I'll let you know. I did however find this pretty useful for what your tying to accomplish with booting to the USB CDROM. http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1676&page=2
I think one of the links is broken on the site but you could look for the download files they are referring to on google. Hope this helps.
 
Google "winnt32/syspart" as far as i know it works on XP. You can use the /syspart switch for Winnt32.exe to copy the installation files to another disk. You slave it in the first PC and start the installation. You can then install that disk in another computer, turn it on, and continue with Windows Setup. Driver detection starts in the second computer.
 
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