soveryapt Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 Simple question, can you PXE Boot Virtual PC? If so, how? Basically, I've been building a new image (between all the other jobs, you all know how it is) and I've used Virtual PC as, basically, the school has bugger all resources to be able to buy anything. Thanks in advance. Andy
Heebeejeebee Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 (edited) You can certainly PXE boot a virtual box setup in Hyper-V since we do it here for testing (test/wipe etc). Don't think you can with Virtual PC though. ... however you may be also to mount a PXE boot cd in Virtual PC and do it that way though. Cheers HBJB Edited January 26, 2011 by Heebeejeebee 1
soveryapt Posted January 26, 2011 Author Posted January 26, 2011 You can certainly PXE boot a virtual box setup in Hyper-V since we do it here for testing (test/wipe etc). Don't think you can with Virtual PC though. ... however you may be also to mount a PXE boot cd in Virtual PC and do it that way though. Cheers HBJB Hmmm .. that's worth a shot ..
Cache Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 The Virtual PC will have a MAC address allocated to it and (assuming you use Microsoft Virtual PC, although I'm sure VMWare does the same) when no there's no valid boot device, such as CD or Hard drive, will try to PXE boot, just alter the bios boot order as you normally would or enter the boot menu I believe.
srochford Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 You can definitely do it with VMWare Server and Player (both free) and Virtual Box (also free) so if you get stuck with Virtual PC then just use one of the other virtualisation products. This is a good way of building the image - it's what we do. 1
vikpaw Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 As above, i've seen my vm's on vmware show the pxe boot up screen. Understanding boot order with Virtual PC 2007 - Virtual PC Guy's WebLog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs 1
soveryapt Posted January 26, 2011 Author Posted January 26, 2011 You can definitely do it with VMWare Server and Player (both free) and Virtual Box (also free) so if you get stuck with Virtual PC then just use one of the other virtualisation products. This is a good way of building the image - it's what we do. As above, i've seen my vm's on vmware show the pxe boot up screen. Understanding boot order with Virtual PC 2007 - Virtual PC Guy's WebLog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs See, I was looking at the pay for systems .. I'll DL them now (whilst I have some form of decent internet) and check out that link .. thanks guys ..
p858snake Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 I'm sure you can do it in Virtual PC..... because i've done it in class from memory (If I had it installed I would have a quick look), Make sure network is ticked and activated in the boot order.
m25man Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 You can make or download a PXE boot floppy/cd image and boot Virtual PC from that, used to do it all the time before Virtualisation and WDS became mainstream.
soveryapt Posted January 27, 2011 Author Posted January 27, 2011 (edited) Thanks for all your replies. I managed to get it working in Virtual PC (thought I'd give it a try before building a new image as I've got staff tying the 7th out of the 13 knots in the noose! lol). Basically, I did the following (based on peoples responses so thanks to those who advised): Go into the settings for the Virtual Machine Find network adapters and change it to be "Shared Network (NAT)" Also, turn off the Integration Features (i.e. uncheck the Enable at Startup) Start the virtual Machine and press DEL during startup This takes you to the BIOS screen where you can set the network as first boot priority Once you've set it, save and exit (normall F10) Allow the machine to start and it should go to PXE Boot Screen and find your network Finish the process however you capture (WDS / FOG / Etc) Thanks to the few pointers (I don't know why I didn't think of pressing DEL in the first place!) that made me be able to sort this. When I have time, I'll still take a look at VM Player and Server. Whoop .. now to wait for this to upload and test on an unsuspecting machine in the ICT Lab .. lol .. Edited January 27, 2011 by soveryapt Extra point added (seen as point 3)
jtotheb Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 (edited) Simple question, can you PXE Boot Virtual PC? If so, how? Assuming you're trying to PXE boot to a server the physical PC can connect to. Bind the Virtual PCs NIC to the physical adapter of the PC. Settings->Networking. When you start the Virtual PC hit DEL to go into its "BIOS" and set PXE as the first boot option. Exit the BIOS saving the changes and then when it restarts it will go straight into PXE boot. (Edit: You'd worked it out as I was typing :-) - NAT will work. If you bind the Virtual PC directly to the physical NIC the Virtual PC will get its own separate lease) Edited January 27, 2011 by jtotheb 1
soveryapt Posted January 27, 2011 Author Posted January 27, 2011 (Edit: You'd worked it out as I was typing :-) - NAT will work. If you bind the Virtual PC directly to the physical NIC the Virtual PC will get its own separate lease) Thanks anyway though!
soveryapt Posted January 27, 2011 Author Posted January 27, 2011 Gah .. Ok, so part 1 is done with in terms of getting the VM to PXE Boot, however, issue 2 has arisen. I'm trying to capture the image that I have created in Virtual PC, but when I load the Capture Image (using WDS) there is no volume in the "choose volume to capture" drop down. Anyone got any ideas? Ta
jtotheb Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 Have you got 512 Meg or more of RAM allocated to the Virtual PC? If not allocate more RAM. Did you run sysprep prior to attempting to capture an image? If not run sysprep. In WDS press shift + F10 to bring up a command prompt. Can you do a dir c: (or possibly d:)? If you can't see the drive at the command prompt then it points to storage drivers. What wim is your WDS using to boot into capture? 1
vikpaw Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 It's not because it's NATted is it? Did you do that binding of network adapter that was suggested above..?
soveryapt Posted January 27, 2011 Author Posted January 27, 2011 Have you got 512 Meg or more of RAM allocated to the Virtual PC? If not allocate more RAM. Did you run sysprep prior to attempting to capture an image? If not run sysprep. In WDS press shift + F10 to bring up a command prompt. Can you do a dir c: (or possibly d:)? If you can't see the drive at the command prompt then it points to storage drivers. What wim is your WDS using to boot into capture? Howdo, I have 1.25GB of RAM associated to the Virtual PC and have SysPrepped it (though not with Generalize, do I need to do that? I'm never sure so I was trying without to see if that was causing my previous issues). I'll check the Shift + F10 thing and see what I can do. Using the (goes to look) meh .. server's not letting me remote on .. darn thing .. (well darn wireless actually) .. It was the standard capture image that is recommended some Microsoft Tutorial I found .. I'll post up when I get to the server ..
soveryapt Posted January 27, 2011 Author Posted January 27, 2011 It's not because it's NATted is it? Did you do that binding of network adapter that was suggested above..? Thought it could be, so binded the network connector instead and still no joy .. thanks though .. (actually, the binding picks up the PXE a lot quicker!)
SYNACK Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 Yes you must generalise otherwie stuff like WSUS and KMS will break at the least. 1
jtotheb Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 If you can see the drive from command prompt then it's more likely you need to sysprep -> generalize. If you can't see the drive then it could be the storage drivers, but if it's the Vista or Server 2008 Wim then I don't see why that wouldn't have it in.
soveryapt Posted January 27, 2011 Author Posted January 27, 2011 If you can see the drive from command prompt then it's more likely you need to sysprep -> generalize. If you can't see the drive then it could be the storage drivers, but if it's the Vista or Server 2008 Wim then I don't see why that wouldn't have it in. It's either from the 2008R2 or Windows 7 Pro disk so should have it in then I'm guessing ..
jtotheb Posted January 27, 2011 Posted January 27, 2011 It's either from the 2008R2 or Windows 7 Pro disk so should have it in then I'm guessing .. If it's one of those then look at everything else first as long as you can see the virtual hard drive from the command prompt.
soveryapt Posted January 27, 2011 Author Posted January 27, 2011 Ah the beauty of Virtual Machines .. just copied and resealed with the generalize setting and the drive appeared when I came to capture .. so fingers crossed this will work .. Thanks once again for all your help guys! Tis why EduGeek is such a brilliant place! Even those of us who have been in IT for donkeys can still learn new things from our peers huh! Leave this going overnight and hope when I come in the morning that it's all captured and ready to roll out!
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