I have been searching all over for a better PXE boot floppy

[fly]

We have some NICs that don't fully support PXE and Microsoft's RBFG.exe floppy that is part of RIS won't boot them either. I've found the ROM-O-Matic site where I can generate one, but I'm looking for a single disk I can carry around for our older PCs.

Anyone got any (hopefully free) ideas?

edit: I think I put this in the wrong forum.

Edited March 6, 2006 by fly

[hj_fr]

What is your non-compatible NIC ? Possibility to flash it ?

[fly]

What is your non-compatible NIC ? Possibility to flash it ?

They are all onboard NICs and I support over 1500 PCs. I was really hoping for a all for one, one for all bootdisk. =/

[Quazl]

I know that the answer that I am about to give is not the answer that you want, but I am in the process of doing the same thing that you are.

Check out this site. It is a little expensive but they can give you the solution that you want.

Argon Technology

I have opted to buying the realtek 8139 card. It is 17 dollars and it workds great with the RIS floppy.

[Bilou_Gateux]

Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk for M$ Networks + PXELINUX

[fly]

Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk for M$ Networks + PXELINUX

Can you explain how to create a PXE floppy with PXELINUX? From what I read on their site, they point you elsewhere to get PXE on a floppy...

[Bilou_Gateux]

Re-read your 1st post and as i understand now, the answer i give to you is not exactly what you were looking for?

check this URL which may answer your needs: http://grid-it.cnaf.infn.it/index.php?pxefloppy&type=1

Here the method to use an image of universal TCP/IP network boot disk and boot from PXE [F12] and load the image.

It requires a Configured DHCP Server and a TFTP Daemon running on a server.

http://pxes.sourceforge.net/howtos/ms_only_environment/

On our labs, we're using a Windows Server 2003 Web Edition box but you can use a Windows XP Pro box with tftpd32 freeware.

• Obtain pxelinux.0 and memdisk from http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php
  
• Create /tftpboot
  
• Put pxelinux.0 and memdisk in /tftpboot
  
• Create /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
  Here's mine
  

  PROMPT 1
  DEFAULT ghost
  DISPLAY messages
  TIMEOUT 100
  label local
  		LOCALBOOT 0
  
  label ghost
  		KERNEL memdisk keeppxe
  		APPEND initrd=netboot.img

  
  

• Create an image netboot.img of your network book floppy you want to boot from and put in /tftpboot
  
• Create /tftpboot/messages to show a message on the screen at boot time
  

Hopefully your clients will get an IP, get and boot pxelinux.0, show messages, boot the default or selected image

Edited March 8, 2006 by Bilou_Gateux

[fly]

I apologize if I was unclear. I have some older machines whose NICs do not support PXE. Microsoft makes a floppy for some of these older NICs so that they will PXE boot. However, it doesn't work for all NICs. I need a PXE boot floppy so that all my machines can connect to my PXE server...

[Fencer128]

I know that the answer that I am about to give is not the answer that you want, but I am in the process of doing the same thing that you are.

Check out this site. It is a little expensive but they can give you the solution that you want.

Argon Technology

I have opted to buying the realtek 8139 card. It is 17 dollars and it workds great with the RIS floppy.

From my own experience - in a pure MS environment this is going to be your only way of achieving what you want without upgrading hardware. As mentioned above, it is usually more sensible (unless all of your 1500 clients have this problem) to purchase a cheap PXE capable NIC and to add it to PCs that are currently not able to PXE boot.

My only reservation is with Realtek hardware . I've personally had bad experiences in the past and would recommend 3Com or Intel instead.

Cheers,

Andy

[jaclaz]

On our labs, we're using a Windows Server 2003 Web Edition box but you can use a Windows XP Pro box with tftpd32 freeware.

OFF TOPIC (but not much)....

did you see this:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=68144

http://winner.windowsdream.com/

jaclaz