I was prompted by a case from personal practice to write this article about how to install Windows over a network. Sitting at work, I once decided to install some Microsoft operating system on a Linux netbook. After waiting for the end of the working day, I began to translate my idea into reality. However, I ran into a small problem. We all know that netbooks do not have a sidirom, and I did not have a suitable flash drive for this matter.
Of course, I heard that there is a Windows installation on the network, but I never tried to do it myself. I searched the Internet for a long time, but I could not find any method worthy of my attention. When I was completely disappointed and was ready to stop my search, I came across a software called Serva. It was written by an Internet craftsman, whose name is Patrick Masotta. Moreover, he did not write it easily, but also documented it. For me it was a truly successful find.
Installing Windows over the network with its help is not difficult. And this utility weighs only one megabyte. In fact, it is a DHCP server, as well as TFTP. It contains the PXE bootloader along with the menu. She is also able to create a configuration file, which is necessary during a network installation. In other words, this software is capable of doing everything on its own for you. The only thing that is required of you is just to unzip all files with the ISO extension, which contain the necessary distributions, and then share them according to the attached instructions. Thus, I installed Windows XP on a local network.
After sharing, start the PXE network boot on the necessary device (in my case it was a netbook). You will succeed on the first try and without any problems and difficulties. By the way, if you need Windows 7, installation over the network is carried out in a similar way. True, I still had one difficulty with the localization of Windows. This happened because my system was Russian-speaking, and I could not change the Russian keyboard layout to English. Therefore, I could not enter a password with a name in order to get the necessary access to the shared folder.
However, the installation of Windows over the network still took place. I solved this problem as follows. On the computer that was the server, I created a user account that had a Russian-language name. Only now I had suspicions that if the installers of the operating systems cannot automatically detect network cards, then with the latest devices there may be some difficulties. Thank God I didn’t have such problems.
Thus, the creator of the outlandish program called Serva greatly simplified the installation of operating systems, which are incredibly popular, and thereby greatly simplified the lives of many people. Now this procedure is turned into a fairly simple task. For this, we all bow low to him all the way to the ground.
I think that you understood everything for yourself. As you can see, there is nothing complicated or supernatural in this procedure. Do everything as I wrote here, and you will be happy.