Installing XP From Network

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I used Windows Setup Manager to setup an unattended installation of WinXP and place distribution folder on drive C:windist

It contains:

cmpnents folder
I386 folder
unattend.bat
unattend

I used Netboot Disk on work station where I plan to install WinXP

But After Booting from Netboot I don't know what to do and the commands to type to install WinXP from the network.

 

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Hope this helps

http://www.itpro.co.uk/88300/setting-up-an-unattended-network-windows-xp-install

 

I already read that even before you posted it. Thanks anyway

Actaully I already read a lot of those guides and the problem is that they only tell you on what to do on the server side. They never show what to do to access the installation files from the client side.

My problem is that I don't know what to type on the Netboot dos I used.

 

Lets just say you followed the document linked exactly, then on the XP workstation you would either have to type nothing at all, or you would have to type in unattend.bat and hit enter.

If you can provide a little more info, I can probably help you. In my head, you have two computers, compA and compB.

CompA:

Has the network install files in C:\windist, C:\windist is shared on the network as some name, "\\compA\windist". Be sure when you are going through the inital stages and it asks you where the install files are located and all that stuff, you use UNC naming to specifiy locations. That way when it generates the file for you, it'll have the correct paths for all your clients over the network instead of just on the local machine. Go through the setup manager to make the unattend.txt file and the batch file as well which in the example linked would be unattend.bat.

CompB:

Boot the system using the boot disk which as the unattend.bat file on it. At a miniumum the boot disk should have the necessary drivers on it to support your network card so that you can establish basic network connectivity. Preferablly through DHCP. The unattend.bat file should already be built automatically using the info you provided. Inside of it at a minimum it will contain the paths to the unattend.txt file and the winn32.exe setup file. To launch the unattend.bat file, just type in unattend.bat and it should do the rest.

There are other ways to make it even more automatic, but if you can get there then I'll help you the rest of the way. If you're doing this on a domain, you might want to look into RIS or WDS. If you have Windows 2000 or 2003 or 2008 then you have RIS or WDS already. Please provide feedback on what I said above, I am making some assumptions, but maybe I'm not seeing it clearly in my head.

Talk soon,

J.