Question

Boot Windows XP Over a Network

Asked by: C_Sharp_Programmer

I am looking for a way to boot Windows XP from a network drive.  I have one "server" and two "client" machines without an OS on them.  I would like to turn on the client machines and have them boot into a Windows XP environment on the server.  My machines do support booting to a network drive, I just don't know how to go about setting everything up.  Could someone please help me?  I have at my disposal all versions of Windows.... Feel free to ask questions if you need anything clarified.  Thanks in advance!

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2007-07-04 at 12:06:20ID22675623
Tags

boot

,

xp

,

windows

,

network

,

over

Topics

Operating Systems Miscellaneous

,

Windows XP Operating System

,

Miscellaneous Networking

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
9

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Slow booting windows XP
    I've installed XP on 3 of my machines with great success, but one of them takes a very long time booting, over a minute. There is a long period as the "chaser light" scans across the screen that there is no disk activity at all. It scans about 20 times, halts for ...
  2. xp booting prolem
    I am running an amd1600 xp with 512 ram. Recently(last two weeks) it is taking 20-30 min to boot up. Ran norton sys. util and found nothing. The only thing I did was change my C drive to ntfs a few weeks ago. xp installed itself on the the 80 gig hard drive that I was install...
  3. Bypass XP boot
    Hello, I've got a machine with BIOS password locked and removable devices boot disabled. It boots on XP on its only HDD (NTFS). Is it possible to boot on a different OS (likely DOS) for someone having access to the HDD an BOOT.INI ? Thanks.
  4. boot problems
    Hi, I hv win xp on a 10 Gb HDD (primary) and RH 7.1 on a 3Gb Hdd (secondary).. When I installed Linux, it overwrote the xp bootloader and I was able to log in only to linux.. Using the XP Cd, I executed FIXMBR and now I can enter only into XP! I do hv a Linux boot disk and...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: r-kPosted on 2007-07-04 at 12:11:14ID: 19420190

 

by: IanThPosted on 2007-07-04 at 14:06:42ID: 19420646

so you want to boot the xp computers from a network share that has the xp image on

 

by: IanThPosted on 2007-07-04 at 14:09:38ID: 19420658

ah found this

http://www.emboot.com/products_netBoot-i.htm

that claims to do what you want

 

by: C_Sharp_ProgrammerPosted on 2007-07-04 at 17:59:43ID: 19421252

Yes, basically I've seen this done before: There are several computers (say 20).  If I turn any one of them on, and wait for it to boot up, and then proceed to log in to Windows, I have access to all of my personal files and settings.  I assume this is done via a network boot, as there is no local disk drives listed under 'My Computer'  Any ideas?  I've done some searching around, but I have yet to find clear instructions as to how to accomplish this.  Thanks for your help!

 

by: IanThPosted on 2007-07-05 at 03:30:59ID: 19422933

from that url

netBoot/i includes a Windows software initiator and all the necessary administration tools to set up a network boot environment over iSCSI.

and

Host Bus Adapters

iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) are network interface controllers that incorporate a TCP Offload Engine with onboard iSCSI processing. iSCSI HBAs are usually abstracted purely as SCSI controllers by the operating system driver system. In this case, the HBA is not a part of the system network stack. Recently there has been considerable effort in providing standard vendor-independent iSCSI management facilities via operating system driver interfaces. These standard interfaces also work with software initiators.

Since iSCSI HBAs offload considerable processing in the iSCSI stack, interrupt generation is less than comparable software initiator setups. Applications leaving few spare CPU cycles should benefit from the use of a dedicated HBA.

iSCSI HBAs have the advantage of including PCI option ROMs to allow booting from iSCSI targets. Alternative iSCSI boot methods with software initiators would require substantial work

 

by: C_Sharp_ProgrammerPosted on 2007-07-05 at 17:40:08ID: 19428663

Hmm, that looks interesting.... I guess, though, I'm just looking for a tutorial on how to go about doing this.  It seems like it can be done without having to purchase software but nobody has just a tutorial on how to do it....

 

by: IanThPosted on 2007-07-06 at 02:22:16ID: 19430402

well its basically using iscsi as xp needs a ide or scsi partition so using iscsi fools xp into thinking it has a valid boot partition. iscsi uses ethernet ie pxe boot so you need to set up your xp client in the bios to boot over the lan and also maybe enable the boot rom (on my pc this can be disabled to conserve power)

Then setup a share on a server with the xp image and setup netboot/i to point to that share

 

by: alexjbPosted on 2009-07-28 at 11:33:56ID: 24963548

I know that this is an old thread, but in case anyone else finds it through google the way I did, I also found this step-by-step guide that seems to address this very question:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1961

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...