Network Booting

[CrazyCrusher]

want to be able to "boot" a system without the need for disks / CDs or any other removal media. Therefore booting over the network is desirable .. Does anyone know of a good site that would help me set this up, my motherboard does support network booting using PXE boot etc...Im looking for a simple way to do this if possible if not I can go the hard way. I have 8 computers on a home network and want to be able to pull and image of lets say windows XP etc without having to pull disk from where ever. more than anything it will be fun getting it to work. thanks

[Midknyte]

Do you mean for an installation or do you want to run a remote session of an OS?

[Sterling_Aug]

It may not be as easy as you would like.

Do you have a server set up with all of the images yet?

You may like to use a BartPE disk with network support pulling the images from one server location. I use Ghost for imaging.

[CrazyCrusher]

Yep Mid I mean for installation and uploading and downloading executable images, I have the server setup Im using TFTP, I have all the images/tools I wanted added to TFT. Thanks Lads

[Midknyte]

You can setup RIS for Windows installs. It's slower than using a local CD or flash drive installation, though.

What do you mean by executable images? Do you mean Acronis or other apps that do restores? I don't think the Home level one can do PXE type installs. You can boot from the CD on the local box and get the image file over the network, though.

You can also try Clonezilla, but I haven't really worked with it. It says it can work with PXE.
http://clonezilla.org/

You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.

[CrazyCrusher]

oh that Clonezilla may do the job or BartPE. Maybe I worded that wrong, I want to be able to house an image on my main box in my room, store images of windows XP Win 7 and Vista, instead of having to use a CD all the time I want to use the network boot option and pull the image down onto any computer reformat and install windows just like you would with a normal CD but doing it from the network. I think you know what I'm saying anyway, I HOPE thanks for your help lads

[Midknyte]

You can just boot off an Acronis (or other imaging app) CD, and connect to a network share to do the restore.

Booting from an Acronis or BartPE disc is a different animal than using PXE. I don't see why you need to use PXE. PXE is assuming you have no boot discs at all and the nic is trying to boot from a PXE server.

[cat6]

There is No simple way to do so.

When pro do it they have a whole expensive pre build system/network with special hardware.

In addition even if you have some kind of connection Windows would install from scratch through Network.

Commonly what is done.

Prepare one computer with regular installation.

Get Acronis True Image and make an image file of the installation. Store it on the main computer.

Make a Boot Disk of the Acronis (it is part of the application).

Use the Boot Disk to boot locally each computer.

If the empty computer is connected to to the network the Acronis boot would recognize the Network and you can Ghost the image to the hard drive of the new computer.

If the computer do not have a CD you have to get one external USB CD-Rom and use it to boot each computer with the Acronis Disk.

[CrazyCrusher]

OK well you guys where right, not an easy task at all but I went with Acronis thanks Mid Cat, Ster for your help. I went and got a USB CD Rom "never thought id need one" this seems to work for what I need, Im sure ill dabble in a little more with what I really want to work, I could always go with windows server and use WDS or Win PE, but you lads go me ointo what I have now so thanks a mill for your help.