so you want to boot the xp computers from a network share that has the xp image on
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Browse All TopicsI 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!
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ah found this
http://www.emboot.com/prod
that claims to do what you want
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!
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
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
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/f
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by: r-kPosted on 2007-07-04 at 12:11:14ID: 19420190
See this previous thread:
e.com/Oper ating_Syst ems/WinXP/ Q_21285877 .html
http://www.experts-exchang