Remoteboot WIn95

WINDOWS NT uses a different type of partiioning to Win95. NT uses an NTFS partition, while win95B uses FAT32. Win3.11, ms-dos 6.22 uses FAT16. As a result, none of these are compatible with each other. NTFS is not compatible _At_all_ with Win95. That might be your problem.

largebrain...

While what you said is right, you are wrong in the same time.
You have presumed the following without asking mvz if:

1) He used the NTFS system or Fat system on his NT.
2) If he is using first WIN95 release or the OSR2
3) While even using OSR2 he might have selected not to activate Fat32 and selected Fat16 which is fully compatible with NT

Your statement about NTFS system not being compatible with WIN95 is wrong, because you could MULTI boot between WIN95 first release and WIN NT 4.0 or 3.51 and still access the windows 95 partition.

Maybe you would like to revise your statements here.
Regards

Sorry, but your answer is off-topic.
I am installing Windows 95 on a _Diskless_ PC, so a wrong filesystem on this PC is no issue.
The Shared Win95-install-dir on the NT is on a FAT partition however, but i don't think it is relevant.

Sounds like you have tries to install the OEM version of W95 on teh server (The OEM requires a local drive to be present, as it is only allowed to be shipped with new PC's), this wont work, you must get the retail version.

I first tried it with the upgrade-version of the retail product.
Then i tried with an older OEM-version.
I thought this should work, because netsetup.exe is available on the CD. But i'll go for a new retail version and try again.

Neiter the upgrade or OEM will work, the upgrade looks on the local disks to see if htere is a OS to upgrade.

sorry, i must have the wrong information (my fault).

Mvz: The error that your receiving is because there already exists files from one version and you switched, therefore you received the SU-0013 error code. Contrary to your comment, a wrong file system is an issue when using Msbatch either in server load configuration or a push install. You don't have to go for a retain version of Win95, OSR2 will work just fine as it was developed for Msbatch and Push installs.

Another issue is your interpretation of Diskless Workstations and Microsoft's. There are three flavors of diskless workstations that can be used (1) Boot from floppy to access server share, (2) Bios boot only to shared hard drive on server (Sun/DEC/IBM) (commonly referred to has "dumb heading" and (3) Hard drive boot to server shared hard drive. Which is your flavor?

It would be easier if you layed out the game plan your attempting so we can point you in the right direction.

Note to J2: You can do this with either the retail version, retail upgrade, OSR1 or OSR2.

Best regards,
Dennis

dev associates:
>>It would be easier if you layed out the game plan your attempting so we can point you in the right direction. <<

With Diskless station, i mean a station with no disks ;-)
Only a network card with a RPL-bootrom.
(ok there is a floppy drive, but i don't use it for booting).
I installed NT4-Remoteboot Servise at the server, and booted the station with dos6.22.
When booting has done, i have a virtual C-drive, which reflect's a direcory on the NT-server (c:\winnt\rpl\....something..)
With "NET LOGON" i log on the NT-server as Administrator, and then start Setup.exe  in the W95-SBS-directory.

j2: I ordered the retail version, and going to test with it next week.

On this "diskless" station enter BIOS setup -> Advanced Config and
change Virus Warning (or Virus smth.) to Disabled.

MVZ:

The following guidelines must be met to enable the Windows NT Server Remoteboot:
1. You must install a network adapter containing an RPL ROM chip on each client computer you plan to boot remotely. The Windows 95 remoteboot client requires 8 MB of RAM and must be 386-based or higher.
2.  You must ensure that the server has enough disk space for the files needed by all remote clients, and they can occupy as much as 30.4 MB of server disk space, depending on the type of software you plan to support. If you plan to use Windows 95 remoteboot clients, either the remoteboot server or the SBS server needs an additional 90 MB of disk space to store the Windows 95 files.
3. You must reserve room for personal copies of remoteboot profiles (if needed) and for folders for each client (where the users will store data). The amount of space you allocate for each client is up to you.
4. If desired, you can define a separate server to contain folders for Windows 95 clients and by doing so, you reduce the possibility of performance problems for remoteboot clients. Each Windows 95 client needs its own folder with a minimum of 8 MB of disk space, and more if users install additional software.
5. Some computers must have at least a disk controller to boot remotely. Many IBM PC AT and compatibles cannot be truly diskless workstations, even if their disk controller is removed, as their basic input/output system (BIOS) assumes that at least one disk or disk controller is present. Even many new computers (even diskless ones) have disk controller circuitry on the motherboard and, therefore, are not truly diskless.
6. There is a glitch though that you should be aware of. See the Windows 95 Resource Kit, Part 2 Installation, Chapter 4
"At the time of the release of Windows 95, the remote-boot option can be used only for diskless workstations on Novell® NetWare® version 3.x and 4.0 networks. Support for remote boot of Windows 95 workstations will be available in upcoming releases of Windows NT. For information about Windows NT support, contact your sales support representative." There is a way aorund this though!

Treat the remote as a floppy boot and after the install, change the settings to permit remote diskless boot.

You must:

Copy all the Windows 95 files to the server using the netsetup.exe tool.
 
Have a real-mode connection to the server.
 
Have a drive mapped to the Windows 95 folder on the server.
 
Have a drive mapped to a home directory on the server where individual user folders and files are to be placed.
 
Have full access rights to the home directory.
 
To set up a floppy disk boot server-based installation, use the following steps:
 
1. Create an Msbatch.inf file and store it in any accessible location. You can create an Msbatch.inf file using Netsetup.exe or Batch.exe. To create an Msbatch.inf file using Batch.exe, follow these steps:
 
a. Run Batch.exe from the Netsetup folder on the Windows 95 CD-ROM.
 
b. Click Network Options.
 
c. Click Enable Server Based Setup, then click Floppy Disk Boot.
 
d. Click Done. Save the file with an .inf extension.
 
NOTE: You can store the Msbatch.inf file in any location that is accessible to users. You can choose any other options to automate Setup, but users who use such an .inf file will have no choice but to use the parameters specified in the file.
 
To create an Msbatch.inf file using Netsetup.exe, follow these steps:
 
a. Run Netsetup.exe from the Netsetup folder on the Windows 95 CD-ROM.
 
b. Click the Make Script button.
 
c. Enter a filename and location for the .inf file, then click OK.
 
d. Click Install Location.
 
e. Click the Server Based Setup check box to select it.
 
f. Click the Store Windows dialog box, then click On The Server.
 
g. Click Boot Device, then click Floppy Boot.
 
h. Click any other options you want to use to automate Setup.
 
i. Click OK.
 
NOTE: You can choose any other options to automate Setup. However, any user who runs Setup pointing to such an .inf file will have no choice but to use the parameters specified in the file. You can save the file with any eight-character name, but the extension must be .inf.
 
2. Change to the Windows 95 folder on the network server and run Setup.exe specifying the script file you want to use. Use the syntax

      setup <path>:\<filename>.inf
 
where <path> is the path for the script file, and <filename> is the name for the script file.
 
NOTE: The .inf file can be in any location. If you do not specify an .inf file, Setup uses the default .inf file located in the Windows 95 directory on the server.
 
During the installation process, Setup prompts you to enter the location of the machine folder. Enter a path from your home directory.

For example, if you have mapped drive E to your home directory on the server, you could enter:
 
    e:\<username>
 
If prompted, choose Custom Setup, and then choose to specify your network adapter and network adapter settings when you are prompted by Setup.
 
After Setup finishes copying files, you are prompted to insert a blank disk for the startup files. After you do so and the startup files are copied, Windows 95 restarts from the startup disk. When Windows 95 starts, you receive the following error message:
 
Error: 0001 The section corresponding to this workstation could not be found in the MACHINES.INI
 
3. Edit the Autoexec.bat file on the startup disk. Map a drive to your home directory on the network server in the Autoexec.bat file.
 
4. Edit the Machines.ini file located in the Windows 95 folder on the network server. Add the following lines to the file:
 
[node address] - This is the 12-digit node address listed when you boot from the startup disk.
 
 Sysdatpath=<path>      - This is the path to the machine folder in your home directory that you created in step 2.
 
<X>=\\<server>\<share> - This is the path to the Windows 95 directory on the server.
 
5. Reboot your computer using the startup disk. Setup will finish.

6. Once setup have finished, change the setting to then boot the machine remotely without a floppy.

Dennis

dev_acciosates:
I tried above story, but with the same result (Error SU-0013).

Then i installed a harddisk, formatted it, installed
dos 6.22, and MS-client 3.0, and connected to the W95-SBS-share on the NT-server, where i have installed msbatch.inf for floppy-boot.
No i am able to start the W95 setup, but another problem comes up:
When the PC reboot's during W95 setup  (from the just generated floppy), an error messages is generating about DBLSPACE not getting installed. When pressing a key the install-proces seems goes on until the error 0003:
'error installing registry' (if i translate correctly)
Adjusting the autoexec.bat on the floppy so that the drive-letter to the home-directory is assigned (and adjusting the machines.ini) does not solve these errors.

Any ideas ?

Mvz: It appears that you have a problem with the specific directory where the shared files are stored and a mapping issue. The above should work fine for you otherwise.

First, on the issue of remote-booting Win95.  Win95 must be intsalled on a primary partition of your primary hard disk, or it will not boot at all - in other words, you have to install at least the boot portion on a hard drive in your local machine.  If the system is trying to load DoubleSpace, you have a problem with your configuration files that were carried over from your DOS installation.  Win95 only keeps DoubleSpace available to be compatible with older DOS compression schemes.  If you look in your config.sys, there is probably a call to a DoubleSpace driver.  Delete that call, and you should be up and running.

Mikeeec, have you read the posts here, the objective is to create a diskless remote boot. Furthermore, on a server based system, user files go into a user directory on the server, and the Windows 95 files go into a shared directory on the server.

Adjusted points to 300

MVZ: You should have two locations being used for this diskless workstation on the server. One being the shared Windows 95 install and the other user specific files. Have you done this? The error your seeing is because of a file incompatibility (version conflict). You can resolve this in one of two ways depending on the source of the conflict; A. Use setver.exe or clean out both file locations and reload them and make sure they are from the same load in. Do not load Dos 6.22 completely, only load those components that you need to access the network!
Let me know how you make out!
Dennis

>> You should have two locations being used for this diskless workstation on the server. One being the shared Windows 95 install and the other user specific files. Have you done this?<<

Yes

>> Do not load Dos 6.22 completely, only load those components that you need to access the network!<<

Some more info:
I have PNP-network-cards, which should be NE2000-compatible. The dos-remoteboot did not succeed with the standard NT-remote-boot NE2000 bootrecord.
So i installed my own PNP-bootname/configuration, with the use of RPLCMD (with the PNPND.DOS supplied with the network cards).
Then i made a new profile in RmoteBoot-manager, and succeeded in properly booting to Dos6.22.
After booting, i have a virtual C:drive which seems to point to the server-directory C:\WINNT40\RPL\RPLFILES\PROFILES\P1
(P1 is the profilename is made up). Here's the config.sys that is created there (by remoteboot manager):

DEVICE=C:\BINR\RPLLNK.SYS
SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS /P
LASTDRIVE=Y
BUFFERS=10
FILES=30
STACKS=0,0
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
rem DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS X=9380-9FFF
DOS=HIGH,UMB
rem DEVICE=C:\LANMAN.DOS\DRIVERS\PROTOCOL\TCPIP\NEMM.DOS

Stringe thing is that C: seems to map to
C:\WINNT40\RPL\RPLFILES\PROFILES\P1
while C:\DOS seems to map to
C:\WINNT40\RPL\RPLFILES\BINFILES\DOS622    ????
(In there i have the complete dos 6.22 files copied)

Maybe this has something to do with the problem.

Here's the autoexec.bat also:
SET COMSPEC=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM
SET PATH=C:\LANMAN.DOS\NETPROG;C:\DOS;C:\BINR;C:\BINB;
SET PROMPT=$P$G
SET TMP=C:\TMP
SET TEMP=C:\TMP
SET DOSSHELL=C:\WKSTA
VER
@ECHO ON
@REM C:\LANMAN.DOS\DRIVERS\PROTOCOL\TCPIP\UMB.COM
NET START RDR /RPL:YES /FIT:YES /COMPUTERNAME:(COMPUTER_NAME) /HIMEM:YES
@FIXMEM
@REM LOAD TCPIP
@REM C:\LANMAN.DOS\DRIVERS\PROTOCOL\TCPIP\NMTSR.EXE

MVZ: Clean those 6.22 files out and then try the same approach! Use only those files you absolutely need, or try remapping to another location.

Stripped it down to just io.sys, msdos.sys and bootsect.com. No go ;-(

mvz:  I  meant here

>>>>>while C:\DOS seems to map to
C:\WINNT40\RPL\RPLFILES\BINFILES\DOS622 ????
(In there i have the complete dos 6.22 files copied)

dew: I meant it there also

mvz: What occurs when you attept to boot the 95 station vis-a-vis a floppy?

I have trown away my network-cards and bought new ones:
3com509-etherlink III. And guess what.... Now it works fine !!!!

Let's end this discussion. It has given me a headache. ;-)

Happy New Year!

I meant what I said though, if you still have some questions while your setting this up, let me know!

Dennis