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Welcome to the ITFreeTraining video on installing Windows 8 from the network. If you want a
quick solution for installing Windows 8 over the network without the need to take media
to the pc this video is for you. If you want to understand all the details involved in
the process see our other much longer video. This video is designed to get you going with
the minimum amount of time and work so without wasting any more time, I will change to my
Windows 8 computer and start configuring it to perform completely network based installs
of install Windows 8 over the network.
In order to install Windows 8 over the network, I need TFTP and DHCP. TFTP allows files to
be transferred to the client required for the install and DHCP allows the client to
be configured for networking booting. TFTP and DHCP do not come with Windows 8 so I will
open internet explorer and perform a google search for TFTPD32. This is free software
that provides both of these services.
It is the first link shown in internet explorer, if you have trouble finding it I have placed
a link for it in the description in the video. Once the page has loaded, I will select the
download link and then scroll down to the bottom and select the link for TFTPD64 Standard
Edition Installer.
Once I run the installer, I will accept the license on the license screen and then on
the components screen select the option Start TFPD64 so I can configure it as soon as the
install is complete.
On the next screen I will accept the default install path and start the install. Once the
install is completed and TFTPD has started, I will receive a message from the Windows
Firewall asking to allow the software through the firewall. I will press allow access and
allow TFTPD through the firewall.
The next step that I need to do is configure TFTPD. To do this, I will press the settings
button. On the Global tab, the only two services that I require are TFTP and DHCP so I will
deselect the rest.
I will next select the TFTP tab. At the top I need to configure a directory to store the
TFTP files in. I will create a directory on the C drive called TFTP and configure this
as the base directory.
On the TFTP tab I will tick the option “PXE Compatibility”. Your network card may be
supported without this option being enabled, but ticking this improves the compatibility
of networking booting.
On the DHCP tab I will configure a starting IP address and 50 addresses in the pool. For
the boot file I will enter in “PXELinux.0”. In a moment I will download this file and
the other files required and place them in the TFTP directory.
Next I will configure DNS, router and subnet mask for this network. These values may be
different on your network.
Once all the settings are configured, I will untick the option “Ping address before assignation”.
This option will ping the IP address before it is allocated with DHCP. Pings are blocked
by the Windows Firewall by default and thus will prevent any IP addresses from being allocated
by DHCP unless you make changes to the windows firewall. I now press o.k. and save the settings.
The files required for TFTP I have made available on the ITFreeTraining web site. This saves
you having to configure these yourself. A link for the download is available in the
description of this video. Once the download has finished and I have opened it, I will
copy the files to the TFTP directory in the C drive.
The next step I need to create ISO’s of Windows PE. In order to do this, I will go
back to Internet Explorer and search for Windows ADK. The first link is Windows Assessment
and Deployment Kit which can be used to create Windows PE ISO’s. I will open this link
and select the option on the web page to download. Once the software has downloaded I will run
it to start the install.
Once the install has started, on the first screen I will accept the default location
for the install files. On the next screen I will accept the default option of no for
the customer experience improvement program and move on.
On the next screen I need to select which components to download and install. The only
component that I need is Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) which will also include
the component Deployment Tools.
Once I press install and accept the security prompts, the components will be downloaded
and installed. The download is 3 Gigabytes in size so I will pause the video and return
once it is complete.
Now that the install is complete, I can close some of these windows. The next step is to
create the Windows PE ISO’s. I will do this by pressing the start key and then selecting
the icon Deployment and Imaging tools. This will open a command prompt with additional
variables configured that will allow me to run the following commands. If you open a
normal command prompt, these commands will not work.
The first command that I will run is CopyPE. This will copy the files required by Windows
PE. The first parameter is the architecture, in this case x86 for 32bit followed by the
directory that I want to copy the files to. The command does not take too long to complete.
Once complete, I will run the CopyPE command again, but this time I will use the AMD64
parameter to create a 64bit version of Windows PE.
Once the command has completed, the Windows PE file are on the hard disk, however they
need to be put into an ISO image. To do this, I will run the command MakeWinPEMedia. The
parameter for this command is slash ISO followed by the location of the files and the destination
file. In this case, I will create the ISO in the TFTP directory.
Once the command has completed, I will run it again for the 64bit version of Windows
PE. Now in the TFTP directory there will be two copies of Windows PE, one for 32bit and
the second for 64bit.
The last bit of configuration that I need to perform is to share out the install files
on the network. I have the DVD of Windows 8 in the DVD drive, so I will open Windows
Explorer and navigate to the DVD, right click it and select properties. Next I will select
the sharing tab and then press the button advanced sharing.
In advanced sharing I will tick the option “Share this folder”. The default permissions
gives everyone read access so I will accept these and exit out of the properties.
Windows 8 is now configured with TFTP, DHCP and the Windows 8 files have been shared on
the network. I will now change to another computer that has no operating system installed
as yet and start it up.
On this particular computer, if I press F12 this will trigger a network boot. When I press
F12 the computer will obtain an IP address from the network, download some files and
display a menu. On this menu I will select the second option which will load Windows
PE 64bit.
Windows PE will be downloaded from the network and be stored in memory. It takes a minute
or so to download so I have sped up the video so we do not need to wait. Once Windows PE
has loaded, a command prompt will appear and WPEInit will be run. Windows PE will attempt
to initialize the networking and in the process will attempt to obtain an IP address from
a DHCP server on the network.
Once the command has finished, I will run the net use command to map a drive to the
install DVD media that I shared previously. Once this has been mapped, I can then run
the setup from the network share. After this, the install of Windows 8 is the same as if
you had taken the DVD and put it in the computer and installed it. That’s it, Windows 8 can
now be installed from the network without the need for any physical media to be taken
to the computer.
If you are interested in a more in depth video of how the Windows 8 install works and installing
over the network works, see our other video on installing Windows 8. This video is just
designed to quickly get your Windows 8 install up and running across the network and does
not go into too much detail about how it works.
If you are interested, please see that video and the other videos that we have available
for free on many IT related topics. Thanks for watching and see you next time.