Step 11
Select C:\net in the Network Client directory and press Enter. The network setup program creates a C:\net folder and places all the necessary binaries and configuration files into that folder. You specify the local hard disk, not the boot disk, as the file destination because the Network Client setup program copies more than the essential files, and those files take up more space than is available on the boot disk. In later steps, you'll remove superfluous files from the C:\net folder and place the streamlined C:\net folder on your boot disk.
Step 12
A screen that lists network adapters appears. From the list, select the network adapter that your system is using. If your adapter doesn't appear on the list, select Network adapter not shown on list below and press Enter. On the next screen that appears, enter the path to the NIC_Driver folder that you created in Step 8 (due to the 8.3 naming format of MS-DOS, a folder named NIC_DRIVER will be accessible under MS-DOS as NIC_DI~1). The next screen that appears displays a list of network adapters that your drivers support. Select your adapter, and when the next screen prompts you, press Enter to select the Setup for best performance option. This option configures the network drivers to use more memory for network buffers.
If you found in Step 8 that your network adapter doesn't include an oemsetup.inf file, you can select any network adapter from the list, manually copy the nic_card.dos driver for your network adapter into the A:\net folder, and copy into A:\net\protocol.ini the entries in the sample protocol.ini file that comes with your nic_card.dos driver. You also need to change the netcard, lana0, and bindings entries in A:\net\protocol.ini to point to the new driver section. Listing 1, page 72, contains a sample protocol.ini file.
After you adjust the protocol.ini file, edit the netcard entry in A:\net\system.ini to point to the new nic_card.dos driver. Listing 2, page 72, shows an example of a system.ini file's [network drivers] section.
Step 13
After you select your adapter, the setup program asks you for a username. Type the domain account that you'll use to connect to the remote share (in this article, the username is Administrator). Press Enter.
Step 14
The next screen that appears, the setup menu, lets you change names, setup options, and network configuration. Select the Change Names option, and on the resulting screen, which Figure 1 shows, set Change Computer Name to a unique name and set Change Domain Name to the domain in which the Administrator user account resides.
Press Enter, and the program returns you to the setup menu. Select Change Setup Options, and on the resulting screen, set Change Logon Validation to Logon to Domain, as Figure 2 shows. Press Enter to return to the setup menu, then select Change Network Configuration. The resulting screen, which Figure 3 shows, contains two boxes; you can press Tab to toggle between the boxes. By default, the NWLink IPX protocol is bound to the network adapter. To add the TCP/IP protocol, shift to the lower box, select Add Protocol, and press Enter. A list of protocols appears. From the list, select Microsoft TCP/IP and press Enter. You return to the previous screen. To remove the NWLink IPX protocol, toggle to the upper box and choose NWLink IPX Compatible Transport. Then, move to the lower box, select Remove, and press Enter. The resulting window will look similar to Figure 3.
If your network doesn't use DHCP to configure clients, you need to change the TCP/IP settings to give your network adapter a static IP address. Select Microsoft TCP/IP in the upper box, then toggle to the lower box and select Change Settings. Press Enter. The resulting screen lets you specify an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway. To disable the DHCP client, you also need to set Disable Automatic Configuration to 1.
Step 15
Press Enter as many times as necessary to reach the setup menu. On the setup menu, select The listed options are correct, and press Enter. When the setup program prompts you for an OEM driver disk, press Enter again. Then, press F3 to finish setup without rebooting. Eject the boot disk, and reboot to your main OS.
Step 16
To fit the C:\net folder and its contents onto the boot disk, you need to remove all nonessential files. Open the C:\net folder and delete
C:\net\setup.exe
C:\net\sockets.exe
C:\net\nwlink.exe
C:\net\expand.exe
C:\net\ping.exe
C:\net\ipconfig.exe
C:\net\addname.exe
C:\net\win_sock.dll
C:\net\winsock.dll
C:\net\wsockets.dll
C:\net\rascopy.bat
C:\net\vbapi.386
C:\net\vsockets.386
C:\net\readme.txt
C:\net\*.inf
Step 17
Copy C:\net to your boot disk, and use a text editor to replace C:\net with A:\net in the autoexec.bat, config.sys, and system.ini configuration files on the boot disk. For example, change C:\net\autoexec.bat to A:\net\autoexec.bat.
Step 18
Open the A:\net\system.ini file, and find the [network] section. Within that section, replace the workgroup=WORKGROUP line with passwordcaching=no. The boot disk doesn't require the workgroup line, and setting passwordcaching to no ensures that a file on your boot disk doesn't cache your user account password; such a cache might create a security problem in some organizations.
After you complete these 18 steps, you have a TCP/IP boot disk with about 200KB of space to spare. I've used this method successfully with Ethernet and Token-Ring LAN adapters.
If you need boot disks for more than one computer, use the diskcopy.exe command to make copies of your new boot disk. To avoid an identity crisis on your network, you need to change the computername entry in A:\net\system.ini to make each disk unique. If you specified a fixed IP address instead of using DHCP, you need to change the IP address in the TCP/IP section of the A:\net\protocol.ini file to a unique address on each disk you copy.
Your TCP/IP boot disk will let you boot clients to your TCP/IP network and use the Netuse command to map network drives. I commonly use TCP/IP boot disks to roll out a standard client image to multiple machines. When client machines have different hardware, I can map a drive to a network share that contains NT 4.0 installation media and use a boot disk to perform a manual or unattended installation of NT 4.0 onto a machine that doesn't have a CD-ROM drive. Putting all the files I need for booting on one disk makes performing these administrative tasks much easier.
Corrections to this Article:
- In "18 Steps to a TCP/IP Boot Disk" (March 2001), Step 12 failed to mention that the NIC_DRIVER file becomes NIC_DR~1 under MS-DOS because of the 8.3 naming format. We apologize for any inconvenience this omission might have caused.