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Booting DOS 7.10 images from Windows Deployment Services (WDS)

By arwidmark / September 15, 2008

 

This is a step-by-step guide to boot DOS 7.10 images from Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

Booting DOS 7.10 images from Windows Deployment Services (WDS)

  1. Create a DOS 7.10 image file (.ima) using winimage 8.10 (http://www.winimage.com). You can also download a DOS boot image from http://www.bootdisk.com/ and use winimage to convert it from .exe to .ima. 
     
  2. Download and extract syslinux from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-3.71.zip (it contains pxelinux)
     
  3. Copy the syslinux-3.71\com32\menu\vesamenu.c32 file to your WDS Server, D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86 
     
  4. Copy the syslinux-3.71\memdisk\memdisk file to your WDS Server, D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86
     
  5. Copy the syslinux-3.71\core\pxelinux.o to your WDS Server, D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86, rename it to pxelinux.com
     
  6. Download a nice background image (http://www.deployvista.com/Portals/0/DeploymentBackground.png), and save it in D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86 
     
  7. In the D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86 folders, make a copy of pxeboot.n12 and rename it to pxeboot.0
     
  8. Configure WDS to use the pxelinux.com boot file (Server properties, Boot tab)
     
  9. In the D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x64 or D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86 folders, create a subfolder called pxelinux.cfg
     
  10. In the D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x64\pxelinux.cfg or D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\x86\pxelinux.cfg folders, create a file named default with the following settings

    DEFAULT      vesamenu.c32
    PROMPT       0
    NOESCAPE     0
    ALLOWOPTIONS 0
    # Timeout in units of 1/10 s
    TIMEOUT 300
    MENU WIDTH 40
    MENU MARGIN 0
    MENU ROWS 12
    MENU TIMEOUTROW 14
    MENU HSHIFT 5
    MENU VSHIFT 2
    MENU COLOR BORDER 30;44       #00000000 #00000000 none
    MENU COLOR TABMSG 1;36;44     #00000000 #00000000 none
    MENU COLOR TITLE 1;36;44     #00000000 #00000000 none
    MENU COLOR SEL   30;47       #40000000 #20ffffff
    MENU BACKGROUND DeploymentBackground.png

    MENU TITLE PXE Boot menu
    MENU WIDTH 80
    MENU MARGIN 18
    MENU ROWS 4
     
    LABEL wds
     MENU       DEFAULT
     MENU       LABEL Windows Deployment Services
     KERNEL     pxeboot.0
     
    LABEL local
     MENU LABEL Boot from Harddisk
     LOCALBOOT 0
     
    LABEL dos710
     MENU LABEL DOS 7.10
     KERNEL memdisk keeppxe
     append initrd=dos710.ima

About the author

arwidmark

eskil - December 16, 2008

Hi,

It works great!
Have you tried to use WDS to deploy Windows Fundamentals?

Eskil Moe

Daniel R - October 9, 2009

And after that? Where do I put the .ima-file from nr 1?
Sorry, feel your eminent guide stops a little abrupt.
/Daniel

tatsumasa - February 9, 2010

now that these folders are in place how do i get it to boot the pxelinux.com file in boot if its looking for a boot wim. and how do i get it as a boot wim

GergMeister - May 3, 2010

We had a problem getting this to work with 2010 because you don’t get the option to choose a boot program in the “boot” tab anymore. Further, it limits what you choose as a default boot image to WIMs you’ve already added to WDS.

In order to fix it we had to use the following command:
wdsutil /set-server /N12BootProgram:bootx64pxelinux.com /Architecture:x64

I’m not too sure about the architecture, we tried all of the steps above including this one with x86 and it didn’t work, so then we tried this and it did work. Could be because the server is x64 or that wds was detecting our test laptop was x64 capable, I don’t know.

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