Rebuilding laptop from network cable

Schizophonic · 18 Oct 2007 at 21:40

Hi

I've been given a pritty lightfoot laptop and it doesn't have any external drvies with it. I want to rebuild the laptop, but how do i do it through the network cable?

blighter · 18 Oct 2007 at 21:52

M3G4UK · 18 Oct 2007 at 21:58

My skills are vauge, but look up booting from PXE. Windows can install over a PXE connection.

Failing that, just do what I did - store the contents of Windows CD on a server and let the laptop install Windows from its current OS!

GhostlyPea · 18 Oct 2007 at 22:20

Best option would be to get a USB CD drive, other than that you'll need to, as said above, boot it from a PXE server which isn't obviously that easy to do unless you have the right stuff.

- Pea0n

Gavstar · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:45

Last time I had to do this I used a Bart's netowrk boot disk to install from a shared i386 directory copied from the XP CD.

Stephen B · 19 Oct 2007 at 09:27

another alternative

remove laptop hd, get a laptop ide-usb interface, copy OS setup files from disc to hd and return to laptop. boot from a system floppy access hd and run setup

I had to do this on an old compaq where the os had been corrupted and it wouldn't boot from an external usb device