Booting off windows image through network

Question

I have a HP st5742, which is a tower that does not have a hard drive and I am trying to boot it off the network, preferably off an image. It was designed along with the program HP Image Manager, however this program has been discontinued by HP and I can not seem to find a way to get a copy. If this helps, I am running my network with windows server 2008 R2 and would like the streaming client to be running windows. I have spent days searching for a way to deploy this machine however I can not seem to find a straight forward program, guide, or way to do this. I am new to this sort of thing but I willing to reading into the subject, all I need is a point in the right direction. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You will have to follow this guide.

Your disk-less client machine will be running Windows 7 Pro. (Not sure about Vista nor Windows 8 nor any Home edition of them. I will not attempt anything earlier than Vista)

I will give you an outline here using iSCSI target. Use it as a check list.

1. Configure PXE Boot

   On your HP st5742, go into bios and enable Network Book or PXE Boot for your network card. Depends on bios, if possible, put the network card as 1st boot device, CD/DVD rom as second.

   If your machine / network card does not support PXE-boot, you will need a new network card. But your mileage will vary with non-onboard nic.

2. Prepare the Window Server

   On the Windows Server, you will need to configure the following

   1. DNS

      The DNS should be configure to serve your LAN. If you prepare to use Windows Domain, AD should be fully configure before you proceed any further.

   2. DHCP

      Follow the guide on the top. This has to be your ONLY dhcp server in the network. Turn off your router DHCP service if you are using it.

   3. TFTP/HTTP server for gPXE

      Though the link is included in the guide, I will give it here.

      If, which I doubt it is the case with HP st5742, your nic/bios support iSCSI boot, you can skip this step, or even the DHCP step above.

   4. Install/Configure iSCSI target

      Windows 2008 Server should come with it. Your iSCSI target(the image file) should be at least 30G. A full update after installation (SP and other Windows patches 100+??) can easily take up 20G or more.

      Test connection to the iSCSI target. Format it to NTFS (as a test).

3. Client installation

   If all the above are done, then you can start your windows client installation

   1. Boot up client machine

      • If BIOS is configure correctly, you will see on the screen about "booting from network..." or "Intel PXE version blah blah". The exact message depends on bios/nic.

      • If DHCP AND TFTP are configure correctly, you will see message about gPXE version and connection to iSCSI target.

        (If you see gPXE messages, some iSCSI connection fail message, check iSCSI string in DHCP.)

      • If the above 2 pass, you will see fail to boot, which is correct. Because your iSCSI image on the server is still empty. Press any key (in most cases, but again, depends on bios) to continue to boot from CD/DVD, and your Windows 7 installation disc should be in the drive now.

      • If the above 3 pass, proceed with Windows 7 installation just like any other machine, up till the point choosing HD. This is the main check point, IF DHCP, iSCSI, gPXE ARE CONFIGURED CORRECTLY, you will see your iSCSI drive show up in the list automatically. If that is the case, congratulation! You are 99% successful.

      • If the above 4 pass, finish your Windows 7 installation, reboot and done.