This guide provides an easy and relatively quick way to PXE boot windows which means you can install Windows over the network with PXE without the need for a CD drive. While the previous guide allows you to slip stream updates and add extra programs it took a LONG LONG time to do, especially with all the downloads it needed to do, this one just installs a vanilla XP, nice and simple, and a lot quicker 
Step 1: Getting started.
What you’ll need:
- Windows 2000/XP CD (to get the i386 directory off it)
- PC running 2000/XP (to act as a server)
- Laptop capable of booting over PXE (such as the L400).
- Tftpd32
- Bart Network Boot Disk
- SMARTDRV.EXE
- A Share. The Server must be able to share files (any Microsoft Windows computer can).
- Working router or plain crossover cable.
Once you’ve collected all of the above, lets begin;
- Create a share, for the sake of argument create it at c:\WINSTALL
- Copy your i386 folder and SMARTDRV.EXE into this folder
- Make a note of your computer name/host name, you can find this out by right clicking on “My Computer”, going to properties, go to “Computer Name” tab, look under Full computer name, in my example, the computers name is STAR, i believe the name needs to be 12 chars or less for this to work in dos mode, so if its longer change it and reboot.
- Create a folder to PXE boot from, c:\OUTPUT
April 26th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
[...] You may have read in a previous post how i installed Ubuntu on my sisters laptop with PXE, well this worked great, but i couldnt for the life of me get WPA to work on the wireless card, so after about a week of trying i decided to try and PXE boot windows as the laptop had no floppy drive, no CD drive and couldnt boot from USB, what follows is the result of the trials and tribulations of that experience…. enjoy. If you want a quicker, simpler installation with a vanilla XP check this Easy way to PXE Boot Windows guide. [...]
April 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Hey, tried this - works very well, easy to follow
May 9th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Could you please explain step 4 more clearly. how do you create text file so it isn’t default.txt
May 10th, 2008 at 2:07 am
@Steve: you need to have “show known file types” enabled (or something similar, i’ve only done it on an XP machine, writing this on a vista machine, so cant reference), then just make sure it doesnt have an extension
May 12th, 2008 at 4:46 am
is there a bart boot disk that contains the NVIDIA ethernet driver? is there a way to make one?
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:27 pm
When I try to map a drive to \\host\shared, I get error 53: The computer name specified in the network path cannot be located. What am I doing wrong?
May 24th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Most likely you arent setting the lmhosts file properly, this needs to be done before the host can be resolved
May 27th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Thanks alot
i think you must mestion in last step
- install XP by Map net drive
and write the command Winnt
you must have fat32 drive to cache files setup
otherwise it will stop at startup & exit
thanks
May 27th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Steve Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:27 pm
When I try to map a drive to \\host\shared, I get error 53: The computer name specified in the network path cannot be located. What am I doing wrong?
I thik your network not working propley so or there is anther DHCP working in same Networking assign the system and confilect with the tftpd32
thaks
May 27th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
shon Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 4:46 am
is there a bart boot disk that contains the NVIDIA ethernet driver? is there a way to make one?
there is I think availabe in Universal Boot Disk i test it very will
thanks
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Error 53:
NetBios to tcp/ip hass enabled on XP machine - worked for me,
Alex
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
i have gone over and over this. i am not new to pxe install, i have done it many times for ubuntu myself, I guess i am getting lost where it is to look for the default, but cant find it. I have completed the task’s to a t, i have dbl and triple checked the contents of the “output” file, it is the same as yours!
i must have messed up on the default file, but i named it default, not defaul.txt. any ideas? thanks
July 4th, 2008 at 9:42 am
@david That sounds really bizarre, do you have any IM software? I’ll talk directly to you if you want, email me ur address to kode-at-lockstockmods.net change the -at- to the at sign obviously
I have msn, gtalk and yahoo, first two are best though
July 9th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Your tips helped me very much. Thousands of thanks to you for this easy tips.
July 19th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Is there any way to add drivers for the LAN cards? As I get an invalid drive specification error when accepting the defaults
July 24th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
After selecting Bart Network Disk, My system just sits on: Loading boot sector… booting….
Anyone any ideas?
August 1st, 2008 at 8:43 am
I get stuck at “trying to load: pxelinux.cfg/default” any ideas on what be the issue?
August 13th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I’m having some problems here too, I set up everything, my laptop connects to tftpd32 and starts to transfer the /pxelinux.cfg/default but then it just gives me the transfer window with 0% progress and eventually times out.
Nice tutorial, btw
August 15th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
As of the moment i am getting a Unable to locate configuration file where am i going wrong? great guide by the way for someone like myself using a c400 latitude haha.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:17 am
hello, i follow all the steps and the laptop runs but stop in this line: “unable to locate configuration file” boot failed, this laptop does not work the cd rom, so i need to install the xp OS, the conection is well done, the ftpserver log say “conection received from “ip address” and transfer file etc,etc. what is wrong here, so i copy in the i386 folder in output and nothing, can you tell me what is goin on please, and please write a copy to my e mail to know about this matter. thanks so much.
August 25th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
After I choose the bart network drive it transfers some files and then i choose the default boot (most compatible) but then i get this error
AUTOEXEC : bOOTED DRIVE IS a:
You can change this file (DISKID.TXT) to hold the text you want…
AUTOEXEC : Setting up Ramdisk at drive q:
*** XMS RAMdisk V1.91 (FU-08/98):XMS get free mem error:
Autoexec : Aborted….
Any suggestions..
Thanks
August 30th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Thanks for this info! It works wonderfully. I had to do something different for my setup though. I already have a DHCP server on my Linksys WRT54G router. Fortunately since I have DD WRT on this router I was able to add a line to forward the pxe to the server, so I had turned off the DHCP on the pxe server. In case anyone else has this situation, check out http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4662&highlight=pxe
September 7th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Here is a big THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to do that for years, can’t believe it!
September 8th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Thank you, worked for me (had to uncheck ping DHCP addresses in settings though)
September 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Any tips on how i can do this for my portege m200? It has NO floppy drive and NO CD drive.
I’ve done all the first steps on my server PC but cant figure out how to get my laptop to boot.
September 28th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
when i boot my laptop for the very first time to install windows i get the error
ARP timeout
TFTP cannot open connection
plz help
September 28th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
pxe complains it can’t find my network drivers, and allows me to choose manually, but my Realtek FastEthernet driver is not listed. How do I make it appear there so i can choose it?
When I type: net use x:\\blah blah, I get msg “The workstation service is not started. Is it OK to start it”.
When i type “y”, I get:
Error 7361: IPX or NetBIOS must be running in order to load the network services.
I already have IPX/SPX/NetBIOS running on server. How do i get it running on client computer so i can cd to winstall and get on with installation?
PS: I have tried with TCP/IP and NetBIOS options on client computer. Still get same error msg. Plz help.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hi there. I am trying to boot Toshiba notebook by your guide. Everything seems to be set corectly, but notebook tells me error: “PXE-E53 No boot filename recieved”
What is wrong?
Thank you.
October 1st, 2008 at 3:13 am
hi
at point 18,
I get:
“Error 7361: IPX or NetBIOS must be running in order to load the network services.”
no idea ….
thanks
October 1st, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Hi.
First of all I would like to say ‘nice howto’, not everybody cares to share information, etc etc.
From reading this however it would appear to me that this will only allow ‘FAT32 installs’ of 2K/XP on the client, due to the fact that A) you format the drive as FAT, B) if the Windows Install did actually reformat the partition, it would have lost the setup files again. Now, let’s say you have to install 50 clients, each with a 20GB HDD then it might be worth formatting a small 1 - 2 GB partition at the end for the copied i386 (or amd64) folder and choosing the ‘other’ larger partition to install to.
@Niall
- looks like your BIOS doesn’t correctly handle the HALT instruction of your CPU (update BIOS) or you have the ‘memory hole @ 15-16M’ enabled. Just my two cents.
Regards
PelliX
October 1st, 2008 at 6:47 pm
To people have problems with the pxe booting MAKE SURE YOU HAVE NAMED THE FILE CORRECTLY, if you cant see extensions (such as file.txt) it will NOT name it correctly, you will need to turn the option to view extensions for known file types on, ive been away for a while so if anyone is having any issues email me, my email address is in comment 13 and i will try to help.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Very good know how how to. I have a ncr touchscreen without floppy or cd. I amtrying to install w2000. I can boot it but It seems it does not see the hard disk. It says directory not available? So I cannot format, copy to? Is there something missing in the boot disk? Thank you for your help
October 21st, 2008 at 3:24 am
I am nearly there, up to step 18, where I type “net use…” I get a bad command or file name error…..
Strange! Any ideas?
November 9th, 2008 at 12:33 am
When I try to map a drive to \\host\shared, I get error 51: The specified computer is not receiving requests. What should i do? Please help! Thanks
November 20th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Brilliant! Old laptop, cd drive is dead, no floppy, needed new HD and no way to get the OS back on, this worked really well!
November 20th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
The best! Saved my laptopt. Did not found better tutorial!
November 25th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Dude, this worked perfectly!
I was stuck with an old laptop; no CD drive, no floppy and the bios was too old to boot from USB or its card reader.
Its now formatted and running XP perfectly
Thank you soo much!
Great Tute!
btw. The laptop was a Toshiba Portege R100
Have a good one! (y)
November 28th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
most excellent instructions. If installing tinyXP, then you also need to grab a copy of winnt.exe off a separate XP or win2k distribution
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Im having the same trouble as Ron in item 27.
I have used WinImage to add some Realtek drivers but I always get the same options to choose from when booting.
Bart site says just add the cab files to the ndis folder.
I have tried this with a couple of bart disks from different sources and I either get “no disk found” or same old drivers to choose from ( even tho they arnt in the IMA file anymore)
Help
December 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Great!! almost got it! but at the very bottom of line it says “unable to locate configuration file, Boot failed press any key to retry..or wait to reset” what is wrong??
December 9th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Hi Guys!
Thanks for great post in your blog.
Greetings from Lithuania
I got the same situation as I think most of you did… IBM ThinkPad X22 (no cd, fdd, usb flash boot option) – birthday present for my mother. I used this how-to and got the same error during network disk mounting operation - 53: The computer name specified in the network path cannot be located. The only thing you need to to avoid this – disable Windows Firewall, I didn’t even enabled NetBIOS.
Of course, this way to install Windows on this type of laptop is I’d say I bit confusing. For my opinion it would be easier to take hard disk drive out ant connect it to another PC using adapter. So when you can easily format drive, make primary partition active, put xp install dir i386 on to it. But you have to have adapter. Anyway it’s very good to learn something new!
Thanks again & bye
Vitalis
December 12th, 2008 at 3:13 am
We tried the above and get the message. \Error : RecvFrom returns 10040: [11/12 21:05:07.819]\ Any clue as to what I am doing wrong?
December 18th, 2008 at 8:38 am
1. For Tftpd32, make sure that in Settings -> Advanced TFTP Options, \PXE Compatibility\ is checked before connecting the computer to the server.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:02 am
For those that got the Netbios error, try copy the i386 folder and smartdrv.exe files on a USB drive, plug in the USB drive then start all over from where you left off.. Chances are, you will be able to access the USB drive on drive D: and install from there without using net use X: \\STAR\WINSTALL
December 19th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Hello,
This seemed to work:
net use x: \\DESTRO\WINSTALL
The command completed successfully.
Then nothing happens when I enter the following:
“type x:
type SMARTDRV.EXE
type cd i386
type winnt”
December 27th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Thanks for the excellent documentation. I made one ‘newbie’ mistake that was causing me to beat my head against the wall for a while, so I’ll share it here so that someone doesn’t have the same problem.
When setting up your IP pool addresses, make sure that it’s on the same network address range as your server. I already had a DHCP server running, so I thought I would be “smart” and set the IP pool up starting at 192.168.1.100, while my server was on 192.168.0.1. I couldn’t understand why I kept getting 0 byte responses even though the client obtained an IP correctly.
Once I changed the IP pool addresses to start at 192.168.1.100, everything worked like a champ.
December 31st, 2008 at 6:47 am
Ok, after I type WINNT it goes to a blue screen and says “Setup needs to know where the Windows XP files are located.
Enter the path where Windows XP files are to be found.”
It shows X:\I386 but when I hit enter it goes to another screen saying that Windows XP requires a hard drive volume with at least 605 megabytes of free disk space……Setup cannot continue…” Any ideas?
December 31st, 2008 at 6:58 am
Nevermind, IP pooling address was wrong in TFTPD32. Fixed that and everything seems to be working so far.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 am
First thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!
I just performed this on a Toshiba Portege M200 machine
(on put press F12, then select the network icon to boot PXE)
A few Answers!
QUESTION:
When I try to map a drive to \\host\shared, I get error 53: The computer name specified in the network path cannot be located. What am I doing wrong?
ANSWER: disable the firewall on your tftp server machine, right click on “winstall”, properties =>sharing tab. and share the folder . . . You can tell that the firewall is disabled by using the client machine and typing “ping 192.168.x.x” (x.x corresponding to the lmhosts file you wrote i.e. 192.168.1.101 joseph
alt-X)
If you receive a reply you should then be able to map the drive.
QUESTION: I’m installing on a harddrive that is 120 GIGs (large) but fdisk only sees about 49000MB. What do I do?
ANSWER: Create a partition that is say 8 Gigs (just like the author), then format it in DOS. After the files are copied, during the WinXP install, select the 8 Gig partition, select the option to convert it to NTFS. After XP is instlled, you should then be able to go in to the “disk management” (Start>run>diskmgmt.msc) tool, and set the volume to dynamic if not already and then add the additional unpartitioned space.
I hope this information is useful! Thanks again lockstockmods!
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Ammending the previous statements of using the diskmanager. For some reason, it will not allow me to “extend” the drive. You are best to NOT upgrade the disk DYNAMIC and instead download and use a Partition manager. Here is a free version: http://www.download.com/Easeus-Partition-Manager/3000-2248_4-10863346.html
February 2nd, 2009 at 4:17 pm
[...] I have a very good experience in booting my father’s laptop, Toshiba Dynabook SS 2000M. I think the laptop is almost the same with Toshiba Portege 2000. The problem started it failed to boot from hard drive. A system file was corrupted so the Windows XP couldn’t start. It is easy problem to solve if it has one or more usual way to repair or reinstall XP. Unfortunately, I don’t have the original CD ROM drive nor the floppy drive. Booting from USB devices is also impossible. How about taking the hard disk and connect it to another PC? Its 1.8” hard drive won’t fit the regular 2.5” notebook hard disk enclosure. This was a terrible situation. The only way it could communicate with outer world is by using LAN (PXE) boot. After googling for information and trying several programs, I found a very good tutorial here: http://www.lockstockmods.net/2008/04/26/easy-way-to-pxe-boot-windows/ [...]
February 10th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
For errors 51 and 53
try this
In the host computer
go to my network places
you should see the files being shared on the network
Place your mouse pointer over the WINSTALL folder that is being shared.
A small box will popup telling you the actual name of the host
use that name when you setup the lmhosts file
February 18th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
One thing to note is that fdisk does not overwrite the master book record unless it is invoked with the /mbr switch. This will sometimes need to be down is, for example, grub was installed.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Worked great for me. Thanks!
I was able to determine that my drive was bad and since my laptop is a toshiba protege 2000 (yes it’s old but great for movies) and I don’t have a CD/DVD-ROM I’m now able to install via PXE (once I replace my bad drive)
Thanks again!
March 4th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
It works perfectly for my portege m200. It be noted that default text file can be created by going to my computer - tools - folder option, and uncheck Hide extension for known file types. With this your default text file will show .txt and you can rename it. Else pxe will show cannot find configuration file.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I get a weird message “Could not find kernel image: linux” when I boot the client. Not sure what´s happening…
March 8th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Never mind… I solved this issue by enabling “Allow \ as Virtual root” in the advanced settings. Thanks for the tut!
March 15th, 2009 at 2:29 am
Thanks a lot!
It works fine on my Toshiba Portege M200, good job!
March 21st, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Thanks! Working good! :o))
March 21st, 2009 at 2:31 pm
QUASTION:
Ok, after I type WINNT it goes to a blue screen and says “Setup needs to know where the Windows XP files are located.
Enter the path where Windows XP files are to be found.”
It shows X:\I386 but when I hit enter it goes to another screen saying that Windows XP requires a hard drive volume with at least 605 megabytes of free disk space……Setup cannot continue…” Any ideas?
ANSWER:
It’s because you haven’t formatted at least one of your HDD partitions.
March 22nd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Having troubles connecting via a router? I struggled with it for hours: My Solution, that may help you was to go into your routers homepage and log in, make sure your routers DHCP server is only set to give out ips from x.x.x.3 to x.x.x.199
and then uncheck the box that says enable dhcp server, so your effectively disabling the routers dhcp server. Then, go into the port forwarding section of your routers web page, and forward the following ports: 4100 ,4109, 68, 69 on UDP to the computer that is running tftpd32.
Tftpd settings that worked for me: Ip Pool Starting address: 192.168.0.200
Size of pool: 40
win @ default router: 192.168.0.1
Mask: 255.255.255.0
Settings button at bottom of tftpd: TFTPD Security: None, untick ping address before assignation
and thats about it
Hope that helps people that are struggling like i was,
Adam Lloyd
AdamCLloyd@Live.co.uk
March 31st, 2009 at 5:12 pm
i not shure how many times i have visted this site in the last week or so but i am please to say it paid off the the long run my dell ls400 is once more up and running i had a little trouble with the (default file) but we got there in the end
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:04 pm
thanks u so much for this tutorial. i successfully installed xp pro. barts network boot disk has also been invaluable help coz i managed to load my network drivers on the boot disk.
thanx a lot again!
April 9th, 2009 at 2:54 am
i get stuck on the loading drivers. It doesnt seem like its supporting my laptop NIC, get a fails to load driver error any suggestions
April 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
thx ….
its work…
May 15th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Hi and thank you very much for the wonderful article.
I tried this on my Acer Travelmate 4402wlmi with no problems until I came to the PCI network driver screen and my NIC card was not listed. Is there a way to inject the driver? I do have the standard one downloaded from the Acer website. But I have no clue on how to do this.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Thank you very much for this tutorial. My XP cd was damaged so my laptop would not boot from it.
With this tut at hand i was able to reinstall my XP. Cheers !
Addendum:
Bartdisk was unable to load drivers for my network card. I had to download and inject ‘m into the bartdisk.IMA to make it work. Here’s how (for people reading this and have the same problem):
- Download your driver from http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/makedisk-old/#niclist
- Download and install WinImage trial from http://www.winimage.com/ (you can use it for 30 days without cost)
- Open bartdisk.IMA with WinImage
- In WinImage, go to \lib\ndis. You’ll see a bunch of .cab files.
- Choose Image->Inject… and browse for your newly downloaded driver file. Click YES to inject it into \lib\ndis\.
- Now goto \etc\ and right-click on _msnet.nic
- Choose Extract and save it on your desktop.
- Open the file on your desktop with notepad.
- Delete the last line in it and replace it with your driver info. You’ll need to replace the last line, otherwise your driver will not show up in bartdisk menu.
For instance if your NIC is a VIA Rhine (you should have downloaded and injected fetnd.cab into \lib\ndis) you’ll want to enter:
FETND VIA Fast Ethernet NIC
- Save _msnet.nic and inject it back into bartdisk.IMA, overwriting the original.
- Save bartdisk.IMA and close WinImage.
You should now be able to select your NIC in the bartdisk menu.