I have a simple home network with 2 desktop computers on it using a D-link DI-604 router and I have a buddies laptop that the cdrom drive wont work and xp is corrupt on it I have no other way of reinstalling XP except via a network. how do I do this I have tried google but I just didnt understand and it was limited in the how to area.the laptop will only boot as far as the blue xp screen just before the logon and then just sits there. I have tried safemode but it will only do the same thing. the laptop is a dell latitude c640 with 512 ram. I eagerly await all the vast knowledge to flow in...

Option1 replace the cdrom so you can use the Recovery CD that came with the laptop Option2 download/create/modify a network boot diskette that would go to a share on one of your pcs containing the xp cd. Manually start the install from the i386 folder by typing winnt and hit enter. Option3 get a usb drive caddy for the laptop drive and connect to one of your pcs. Copy the i386 folder to the drive [assuming fat32 not ntfs or you will need a ntfs boot diskette]. Put the drive back in the laptop and from a boot diskette start the install from the i386 folder. Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

could you please explain option 2 for me the reason I have asked is this laptop has no other drives availible at this time other then the internal harddrive and the nonfunctioning cd rom drive I have found on the laptop where it will boot from network I just dont know how.

This is W2K but XP is largely the same: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/deploy/depopt/remoteos.mspx

You could make a bootable usb flash drive. Put linux or Barts pe on it. Copy the data to hd. You could make shared drive on a networked computer and run from other computer. No need to copy data across. Take the hd out of the laptop and put in a cheap usb enclosure. You could get a floppy that had network support for win98. (search internet or get from computer) You will most likely need to add drivers and fix autoexec.bat and config.sys. Put dos on from floppies and use intrlnk/intersrv (direct connection) to serial or lpt port. Copy data across. Use modem to transfer data with terminal program. I agree you can use pxe. Might be easier to use a floppy with a tftp client and put a free tftp server on a network. Don't forget freedos supports usb. You could make a ghost image and put the correct hal in before. (way too much work) This will be the way of the Vista installs soon. (maybe?) I still like the idea of fixing the CD drive.

jessejames this is a home network with no RIS server! OK polizi Option 2. FYI bios boot from network requires a PXE server which can then download a bootable image for the pc to load. See here http://pxes.sourceforge.net/howtos/ms_only_environment/ :-) I don't think that's what you want to do. Start here http://www.bootdisk.com This used to be so easy with NT server. It had a network client administrator to create network boot diskettes automatically. All you had to do was change the mapping to a different share than the default and you were in business. see here http://www.appdeploy.com/articles/bootfloppy1.asp If you have access to a NT server disk you can do this http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/20257/20257.html At this point the best I can offer you is to cruise thru the network boot disk section at bootdisk.com. Basically what you want is to bootup, load network drivers [some generic ones will work with just about any nic] and then net use z: \\another pc name\share the cd name You then go z: and you are at the shared cd drive with the xp cd in it. Cruise to the i386 folder and type "winnt" to start install. Have your laptop drivers available on floppy disk. You can swap disks during install. It will ask you when to put the boot floppy back in. Best of luck! Give a person a fish you feed them for a day. Ask a person to internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

I am lost here guys I have no floppy to use for this and the cd rom in the laptop is dead. I can access the PXE option for boot up what I need to know is how to I set this up on my desktop to connect to the laptop and run the installation do I have to create files and put them somewhere for the laptop to read if it can connect I downloaded some software called Tftpd32 but I dont think I have it configured right or the correct file somewhere I keep getting PXE errors.