Hey Steve,
This is a GREAT tool and helps a lot when a PC without a CD ROM. The only thing I like to mention here is that on step 9 which some guys who love this tool also have the same question - unable to access C: drive. I think Steve has answered the question that we need a FAT16 patition instead of FAT32. This should be resolved most of you who get stuck in step 9.

Richard Chow 10/4/2002 10:53:01 PM

After creating the bootdisk and rebooting (step9-10),
you are on at the a: prompt. I cannot get to c:(I get invalid drive specification).

Please Help!!!

Christoper8/19/2002 3:56:51 AM

STEP 17
The Autoexec.bat had only 03 lines on it as:
1.@echo off
2.prompt $p$g
3.set path= a:\\dos
What am I doing wrong?

joe7/31/2002 2:45:39 PM

One more... why do not get access to my C drive (its a FAT32 ) when I use the bootdisk ?? Is there already a answer? I don't see it?

Tarjei2/12/2002 10:05:47 AM

I built several IP boot disks for desktop PCI NIC cards but I am having trouble preparing one for PCMCIA nics. If anyone could lend some assistance on the configuration for a 3com 3c574 and or the 3cxfe575bt(XJack) I would be grateful. With one of these, Imaging Laptops would be a breeze :-)

Christopher Waterous 1/30/2002 2:10:51 PM

How do the 18 steps differ if we're using Windows 2000 Server instead of NT Server? Since all servers use Static IP Addresses, when you build this disk do you have to use the IP Address that was origninally assigned to the server you are trying to restore, or use an unused address. Also if you need a to assign a computer name or username to this disk, should they be the same as on the computer you're trying to restore? I'm a little confused.

Debra K. Mull 1/22/2002 6:41:34 AM

Sorry its taken me over a month to answer your questions, unfortunately my employer has decided that Christmas is a great time to make a bunch of us redundant. Anyway if you are still having the same problems with reading FAT partitions from your boot disk here are a few tips:

1) Make sure its FAT16 and not FAT32 which I think is the default in Win9x.
2) Make sure that the partition does not go over the 8 Gig mark on your disk as MSDOS can't read partitions over the 8 Gig point.
3) If you reformatted an NTFS partition as FAT16 in Windows NT, I've found that NT forgets to change the partition label which describes to the OS what the partition is formatted at (NT does not use this label, but MSDOS does). You are best to delete the partition and create a new one which you format as FAT16.

If you are still stuck please email me and I'll do my best to help. Smartdrv does improve the speed of a copy, you can run it from the command line just before you run winnt.exe.

Best Regards

Steve

Steve Ryles 1/12/2002 5:27:54 AM

I am having the same problem with not being able to access the c:drive (FAT16). Everything seems to load OK and I can even login and map a drive to my remote server share but can't start my install because setup cannot find a place for swap files (i.e C:drive). If someone could also help with info on using smartdrv or similar disk caching program to help speedup setup.

Richard Zurawski 12/1/2001 10:07:15 AM

After geeting to Step 9 and rebooting my machine I cannot access the c: drive. I have tryed this on a Windows 2000 Pro PC (had a FAT partition) and on Win 98 (C: drive with FAT) and was wondering if any one can help me.

Thanking you in advance

Lee Silk 11/27/2001 9:28:36 AM

Well after reading the 18 steps to tcpip network booting and all the comments about the article and Steve Ryles, I felt like Steve has totally ignored a vast majority of Laptop users. I am quite sure a large number of people are using laptops on their networks and they would also like to be able to boot these laptops from the network for imaging and backup purpose. My company has a policy of using notebooks only and I am sure there are many out there like me.
It would be great if STEVE or anyone else out there in the wild could add some more steps to this great article and make it usable for notebook users too.
If someone knows about some links where we can find ready made network boot disks, their listing here would be of great help.

Thanks alot in advance

Asmat 11/19/2001 12:43:05 AM