Set up a free PXE server on your Network

PXE is a great way of booting client machines from a network card. It's useful for accessing network resources, disk tools and imaging software and you don't have to mess around with bootable CD's or floppy disks.

Companies like Symantec sell quite high end solutions that allow PXE to be on their networks yet you don't need to spend a single penny in order to get a useful, working PXE environment - This is how you do it for free.

1. Obtain the following software:
TFTP32
WinImage
3Com's MBAUTIL (This one might be a pain to get hold of. If so, drop me an email and I can make it available for download from this site).

2. On a Windows DHCP Server (it might work on others but this is untested) add the following options:

66 Boot Server Host Name
67 Bootfile Name

Bootfile Name should be mba.pxe (Which we will create later).
Boot Server Host Name should be the IP address of where the TFTP server will live.

3. On the server you want to have acting as a PXE server install TFTP32.

4. Create a folder called PXE on the root of C:\ then Launch TFPT32 and click on Settings.

5. Configure TFTP32 as follows:
turn OFF DHCP Server, Syslog Server and SNTP Server.
Change the DEFAULT folder to C:\PXE
Close and relaunch TFTP32.

6. Install WinImage onto your workstation.

7. Either take an existing floppy boot image or take an actual bootable floppy and allow Winimage to create a IMA file. DO NOT use compressed IMZ format. For this example I'm using a bootable version of partition magic.

8. On the PXE server, create a folder called PXE and drop the IMA file from step 7 into it.

9. On the workstation or on the PXE server install the 3COM MBAUTIL tool. Because this is a 16 bit tool do NOT install it into program files. The root of C: is best.

10. Launch c:\MBAUTIL\IMGEDIT\IMGEDIT.EXE and accept all the defaults.

11. Click on 'Create a PXE menu file' - Add in options for Hard Disk boot and for the floppy disk tool you are going to convert. save this file as c:\pxe\mba.pxe

12. On the main IMGEDIT menu click on Edit an existing file.

13. Click on the IMA file in the C:\PXE folder.

14. Click on Properties and then change.

15. Change the type to TCP/IP and select the PRE-OS and WRITABLE radio buttons. You need to do this every time you modify the IMA file or drop a new one in the PXE folder.

That's It! You now have a working PXE environment. To try it boot a machine from it's network card. REMEMBER! The machine MUST be on the same subnet as the PXE server otherwise it may not be able to get across the router without additional router configs. This increases complexity and makes it a pain to troubleshoot.