How to prepare/SYS a Disk for windows install from KNOPPIX?

[johnnybhoy67]

Hi All,

I'd like to be able to SYS a hard drive from Linux so that I can copy some DOS files to that drive and start my install directly from the hard drive.

I suppose there may be some different ways to do this.....

1. Edit the boot sector/partition table
2. Image a good/working disk and install the image onto the desired drive

...but these seem a little over complicated for what I want to acheive and I'm not sure that I fully understand what's required at this point anyway.

Does anyone have any experience of having done this? I know it's a strange one but it's to ease windows deployment woes and get people used to using Linux before we go down the whole Linux migration route.

Any help appreciated.

J

[ckamin]

I know it's a strange one but it's to ease windows deployment woes

What version of Windows are you trying to install and what file system are you planning on using on the drive? Is there some special reason that you are trying to do something outside of the usual Windows install methods? Are you planning on a dual boot system? We need a little more information in order for us to understand what it is you are trying to do.

[johnnybhoy67]

Hi ckamin,

Sorry for being vague......

1. I'm trying to install a win95 version of DOS to FAT32 partition, ultimately so that I can setup a base level environment for a scripted install of Windows 2000/XP, converting to the NTFS filesystem during the build.

2. I don't have access to the "normal" windows install methods via Active Directory etc. and need access to Novell CIFS shares to pull down the i386 folders onto the FAT32 partition to initiate the install.

Summary

partition drive with FAT32 (around 5GB)
SYS FAT32 partition so it's bootable into DOS
connect to network (CIFS) and get i386 folders (and whatever else I might want to include in the build)

There are many reasons I can't use a DOS bootdisk to connect to the network. We have a very difficult environment with many different directory services and we have NO IPX and differing versions of SLP which cause the DOS bootdisk to fail due to the client version and there is no way round that until we sort the whole SLP problem.

[|enouf|]

hi;
i may be misunderstanding what you need - but it seems you want linux to do what DOS cannot ? It seems perhaps something such as Barts PE Builder (or UltimateCD) might be suited for those tasks. I mean, if the end goal is to install windows, what do you need knoppix to do - a network boot ? I suppose you can just boot to the LiveCd and d/l the necessary files for win2k/xp (i386). I'm a linux newbie myself, but i know win98 pretty dang well