Bart's Network Boot Disk
...People tell me my network bootdisk is by far the best found on the web...
Version 2.7
Last updated on Mar 30, 2004
Important notice: the development and maintenance for this page has stopped. Please don't contact me about this page! I'm leaving the page as it is, for reference...
Table of contents
Introduction
A highly professional network boot disk for connecting to a network share on a
Windows 9x/ME/NT4/2000/XP or Linux Samba machine.
Also allows you to use network applications such as SSHDOS (secure shell) or Ghost
Peer-to-peer/multicast, using Packet driver interface.
Best features are:
- Modular design
- PCI nic auto-detect
- Supports TCP/IP, Nwlink and Netbeui protocol
- Very easy driver plugin support (101 driver plug-ins currently available)
Full feature list:
- Modular design - based on modboot.
This means you can customize the bootdisk yourself by adding only the
modules you need.
- Supported protocols: TCP/IP, NWlink (IPX/SPX) and Netbeui.
- PCI network adapter auto-detection.
Non PCI adapter must be selected from a manual list.
Multiple PCI network adapter (supported up to 5) detection (you can choose which one to use).
- Very user friendly dialog boxes to select options or to enter information.
- Optional mouse support.
- Before starting the network services you can edit: username,
machinename, IP address and more...
- Random machine name generator, when your machine name start with
"PC-" a random number will be generated and your machine name will
be like "PC-NNNNNN".
- The information needed for a network adapter is in a single .cab file.
- The network adapter .cab file can hold a custom batchfile "autorun.bat".
You can use this to run some kind of "enabler" or to ask the user
for adapter specific settings (look at ne2000.cab).
- This single file .cab network driver design makes it very easy for
technical people to create driver add-on .cab files. The less technical
end-user only has to copy the .cab file to the correct location on the
bootdisk.
- Profile support, you can save your settings to a profile. When the msnet
module is started, you can select what profile to use. Handy for your home
network with static IP addresses. You can control what profile to start (if
more then one) using global settings.
The profile also holds a custom batchfile that will be executed at the very
end (after the global "autoexec.net"). For example to start some
network application.
- It has "ping" and "ipconfig" to check your connection.
- Domain Name Resolver (DNS) support.
- When using DHCP, the name server and DNS suffix are read from ipconfig
and put in tcputils.ini.
- Support for packet driver interface is built-in! A wattcp.cfg file is generated automatically.
I've tested Ghost peer-to-peer and SSHDOS, works OK.
There are SSHDOS (secure shell) and SCPDOS (secure file transfer) modules.
- You can slowdown the speed of the CPU to avoid
divide by zero errors
on Pentium III machines >500MHz.
- My boot disk works with VMware! ...eh... This is just luck... I don't use
VMware myself. I've heard from people who say that creating a bootable DOS
network boot disk in VMware is not easy! VMware users need to add
DOSIDLE.EXE to their msclient boot disk!
- You can edit protocol.ini, system.ini and lmhosts before starting network
services. This will allow you to set I/O port or IRQ for some non PCI
network adapters.
- Saves a "prebuild" driver list, at first boot. This will speed up
all next boots, because there is no need to unpack any driver plug-ins.
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