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Is it possible to install Windows in a brand new machine, if it only has the ability to launch OS from disk and lan?

I set the machine to Boot from lan and set my computer to Internet Connection Sharing my WLan. This changes the Ip of the Lan adapter and somehow makes it behave as a DHCP server.

This failed and the new computer doesn't responded. It said that it didn't find any DHCP servers to get an address from.

Is this even possible or am I being silly?

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Booting over network is possible but takes considerable amount of configuration. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_boot – billc.cn Jan 21 at 17:36
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Can you PC boot from a USB thumb drive? That may be easier. – JonnyBoats Jan 21 at 17:39
Why not just install from the disk? – techie007 Jan 21 at 18:18
I am on a machine without removable media. I can only boot from HDD and Lan – Odys Jan 21 at 19:38
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By sharing your network, normally it will behave as a DHCP and will NAT all your traffic. If you want to boot from LAN, you will have to buy a router that has PXE capability (dd-wrt might support this) or just make a VM or use a physical machine to act as DHCP server with PXE. This can be done with Linux. have a look here as this post provides a complete guide on how to do this. It is not the easiest thing to set up.

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True, PXe boots aren't for the faint at heart. Once you've done it once though. . . – surfasb Jan 21 at 20:36
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