Varying hardware

[sparhawk]

I am a PC technician and we have many people who want to get windows XP installed on there computer. The computers are all makes and models with varying NIC cards.

I thought I could do a RIS server and use a USB NIC to do the install but the only USB PXE disk would cost to much to get to make it work.

Then I thought about just using an unattended file and bat file on a floppy and have it point to a network share but as of yet have not gotten this to work.

Does anyone know of a way that I can use a single floppy to install over a network to a client computer of unknown make and hardware configuration and have the CD-key and name stored on the floppy in an easy to edit format?

Thanks for any help

Walter

[prathapml]

You can have your winnt.sif on the floppy (for automation), and set it such that the drivers will be taken from the floppy. So now you just put the needed drivers on a floppy each time you want to install to a different machine, and put that and the winxp CD in the drive, and boot-up from CD.

Only issue is whether the drivers will fit on the floppy. You could use the MSFN official guide to make your CD with drivers. guide.

And the LAN-cards driver-pack from here.

[sparhawk]

thanks for the tips