Recipe 2.3. Installing from a Network Share

Problem

You want to install Windows XP from a file share located on your network.

Solution

Without a lot of work, you can only do this from a machine running an existing copy of Windows XP. This of course means that you'll have to perform either an upgrade to your current operating system or a multiboot installation, in which a clean copy of XP is installed alongside your current operating system.

To run XP's installation program from a network share:

1. Boot your existing version of Windows on your target machine.

2. Browse to the network location where the Windows XP distribution files are located.

3. Run WINNT32.EXE.

The Setup program will run and create a local copy of the Windows XP distribution files that are located on the file share. Once the copy process is complete, Windows will prompt you to reboot. After the restart, you can now follow the instructions, beginning with step 8, which can be found in Recipe 2.2.

Discussion

Installing XP from a network share isn't a very efficient way to distribute XP to multiple machines unless you have only a handful of systems on your network. The most common reason to install the operating system this way is to share out one CD or DVD drive across the network and not shuffle CDs around to multiple machines. However, for any more than five computers, we recommend finding an alternate method of installation, particularly using the client deployment features of Windows Server 2003.

See Also

Recipe 2.6 for installing from Remote Installation Services