Booting from Windows Disc.

[Toxcity]

Hiya guys.

Just a quick question:

If I was to rip my XP dics to harddrive on the server, could I boot from it to install XP on other PCs on the network?

Thanks!

[Jim]

Originally Posted by name='Toxcity'

Hiya guys.

Just a quick question:

If I was to rip my XP dics to harddrive on the server, could I boot from it to install XP on other PCs on the network?

Thanks!

If you wanted to install Windows from a network share on a server you'd need to create a custom bootdisk that contained DOS drivers for your network card along with all of the MS networking drivers.

Some can be found here http://www.bootdisk.com/

Or just install Windows from a USB stick instead

[Toxcity]

Originally Posted by name='XMS'

If you wanted to install Windows from a network share on a server you'd need to create a custom bootdisk that contained DOS drivers for your network card along with all of the MS networking drivers.

Some can be found here http://www.bootdisk.com/

Or just install Windows from a USB stick instead

Thanks for the quick reply dude!

Right, network booting looks like to much work atm.

Could I boot from a USB harddrive? Could be good.

If you can't, I will have to buy a bigger USB stick for Vista!

[Jim]

Originally Posted by name='Toxcity'

Thanks for the quick reply dude!

Right, network booting looks like to much work atm.

Could I boot from a USB harddrive? Could be good.

If you can't, I will have to buy a bigger USB stick for Vista!

Booting from USB really depends on your motherboard. My Asus Commando supports it really well (I installed Vista from a USB flash drive over the weekend). All I needed to do was the following:

Originally Posted by getusb.info

Run CMD.EXE and type the following. WARNING: This set of commands assumes that the USB flash drive is addressed as “disk 1″. you should double check that by doing a list of the disks (type “list disk”) before cleaning it. If you have multiple hard drives, like an SDFlash drive or a Multibay drive, you could end up wiping your second drive using this command.

1. diskpart

2. select disk 1

3. clean

4. create partition primary

5. select partition 1

6. active

7. format fs=fat32

8. assign

9. exit

3. Copy Windows Vista’s DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

Simply issue the following command to start copying all the content from the Windows Vista DVD to your newly formatted high speed flash drive.

* xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

And that’s it. Boot up the machine, have it boot off the USB drive, and watch how fast the installation completes.

[Toxcity]

Cheers XMS, Ill give it ago.

How big is Vistas installation files? 2.4gbs?

[Jim]

Originally Posted by name='Toxcity'

Cheers XMS, Ill give it ago.

How big is Vistas installation files? 2.4gbs?

Yeah about that size. I used vlite to strip the useless trash out of my Vista install and brought the install down to 1.4gb

[pinkpig242]

m8 upload it cause i dont wanna download 4.5gb and get 3 gig of crap :P

[Jim]

Originally Posted by name='pinkpig242'

m8 upload it cause i dont wanna download 4.5gb and get 3 gig of crap :P

Lol, I don't think that uploading my Vista install would be a good idea. I can see MS being slightly miffed

[pinkpig242]

shhh m8 know one will know - delete both our conversation and they wont find anything :P

[Jim]

Originally Posted by name='pinkpig242'

shhh m8 know one will know - delete both our conversation and they wont find anything :P

Or how about you buy Vista and download VLite

Talking warez to a forum admin isn't generally a good idea.