booting from the network

I connected two laptops via a cross cable so that A can boot via its onboard card from an XP bootable CD in laptop B. I also set the boot sequence so that A has 1st boot as on board NIC but could not boot from the network. any idea?


specs
xpsp 2,dell latitude d520

Hi SOSE

from the description u have connected 2 laptops ,but u did not inform whether they communicate with each other ,thy participate in network or not
since the system will not boot if the source is not available

So the first PC will just look at the network and might see another PC, how will it know to use the other PC's CD drive?

we have to set the boot preference to boot from the cd drive

I connected two laptops via a cross cable so that A can boot via its onboard card from an XP bootable CD in laptop B. I also set the boot sequence so that A has 1st boot as on board NIC but could not boot from the network. any idea?

If your objective is to be able to install XP on laptop A via lapotp B, then you need to share the XP's CD from laptop B, then use a network boot disk on laptop A to boot the computer, then access the share on network B, then install XP like that.

Trying to install XP by booting the computer off the CD drive of another computer isn't possible. Network booting (PXE booting) isn't appropriate for this scenario. Network booting is appropriate when you have configured images that are deployed by PXE booting machines.

I connected two laptops via a cross cable so that A can boot via its onboard card from an XP bootable CD in laptop B. I also set the boot sequence so that A has 1st boot as on board NIC but could not boot from the network. any idea?

If your objective is to be able to install XP on laptop A via lapotp B, then you need to share the XP's CD from laptop B, then use a network boot disk on laptop A to boot the computer, then access the share on network B, then install XP like that.

This might help you do what KiLLaBeE suggested: www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/