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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
October 14, 2009 at 8:50 pm
hi guys, to fix error 51/53, you must supply the actual hostname for the server. to get over this:
1. open cmd prompt
2. type hostname
tq
September 29, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Jane, i tried to email you but as you decided to use a false email address i will respond here.
The important part of the statement is “network disk”, that has nothing to
do with a CD, i wrote the tutorial using a laptop that had no cd drive, if a
cd drive was needed it would have been pointless.
I’m not sure if the failure is on your part to follow instructions (the TFTP
Server is what sends the network disk to the computer via pxe), or a failure
on my part to adequately explain the process, though the countless people
who have successfully completed the process suggests the former.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the failure is on
my part and apologise for my inability to sufficiently explain the process
to you.
If you could give a bit more detail as to where you are going wrong i’ll try
to help.
September 29, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Please clarify page three ‘boot the bart pe network disk’ how exactly am i meant to do this without a CD drive ?
The whole idea is to install using pxe ????????
If i had a cd drive i would ignore the 3 pages of instructions and boot the bloody thing!
what a swiz.
September 24, 2009 at 6:33 pm
[...] link explains how to use "PXE boot" to install an operating system from a network share. http://www.lockstockmods.net/2008/04…-boot-windows/ [...]
September 7, 2009 at 3:21 am
This is one of the best info I’ve gathered in the internet. Worked flawless. Thank you very much and more power to you. God bless!
September 2, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Was able to get around the protocol.ini problem by downloading an open source DOS driver for my NIC and injecting it into the BartDisk. The original driver I tried to inject did not support DOS.
A word for the wise that might be trying to do this with Windows XP Tablet Edition. You need to copy the CMPNENTS folder from the Windows XP Tablet Edition CD into the WININSTALL directory alongside I386 and then run winnt.exe /2 to enable makelocalsource:all or else the tablet components will not be installed.
August 27, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Had problems with NIC driver, used WinImage to inject a driver I downloaded and modified to get it to load. I’ve got past the initial driver loading and was able to configure the lmhosts, but as soon as I do that I get the error:
”
Microsoft Protocol Manager version 2.2
PRO0008E: Invalid decimal digit in PROTOCOL.INI file
Error loading device driver PROTMAN.DOS.
Error 7306: The driver failed to initialize.
MSNET: aborted…
”
I also get this error when trying to run the net use command and after hitting Y to start the WORKSTATION service.
Any suggestions? I can’t seem to location the protocol.ini file to even see what might be wrong.
August 5, 2009 at 10:53 am
I finally got working this default file in pxelinux.cfg.
Copy Paste the code in the notepad then save it as “default”. include the two double apostrophe in default when saving it from notepad. Nice Tutorial btw
September 29, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Thanks vin i updated the tutorial (I actually updated the tutorial before i noticed this comment, but thought id thank you anyway)
August 5, 2009 at 7:40 am
Step 2: Setting up a TFTP Server. Explain #2, #3 and #4
tftpd32 configuration under DHCP Server
IP Pool Starting Address???
September 29, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Hi Vin, i have updated the tutorial with explanations, hope they are clear enough
July 27, 2009 at 11:19 am
Thanks a lot for the tutorial and also to Maarten!
It worked fine for me!
July 24, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Kudos! Great tutorial, one of the few that actually made a difficult operation easy to follow and had no errors. Very impressive.
July 17, 2009 at 7:10 am
Wow. I got to say, this really did the job. I was fussing around with the boot file in TFTPd32 for a long time until this tutorial. Thank you for providing all of the necessary files. After following your instructions everything booted perfectly except for the network drivers. To get around this I used winimage to add a BIOS update from the target computer’s manufacturer into the bartdisk image. Once bartdisk booted up, I ran the BIOS update at the command prompt. With the BIOS updated, now supporting USB storage booting, I plugged in my WinPE build, because it has USB support, and initiated the Windows installation from my USB HDD.
Excellent work. Improvements…? Either, include USB support in the bartdisk or offer another image that does, so that USB storage can be accessed at the command prompt, OR include better or universal network drivers in the bartdisk or offer another image that does.
Thanks a million!
When I bring my friend back his laptop he’s going to wonder how I did it with no CD or floppy drive.
June 29, 2009 at 12:55 pm
@Maarten: Great tut on the driver injection. Saved my life.
Many thanks to everybody contributed to this tutorial, especially to the author.
June 25, 2009 at 2:09 pm
[...] PXE Boot Windows – the easy way
May 19, 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.
May 15, 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.
April 10, 2009 at 4:44 pm
thx ….
its work…
April 9, 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 3, 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!
March 31, 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
March 22, 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 21, 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 21, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Thanks! Working good!
))
March 15, 2009 at 2:29 am
Thanks a lot!
It works fine on my Toshiba Portege M200, good job!
March 8, 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 7, 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 4, 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.
February 25, 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!
February 18, 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 10, 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 2, 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/ [...]