Boot from LAN is really useful if you have lots of computers. This article will guide you how to install OS through Network boot.

Since the early versions of AIO Boot, this tool has supported booting from the LAN. It supports you to do a lot of work such as installing OS, running tools to Ghost, managing partitions, backup and recovery.

You just need a computer to replace the other bootable devices like USB, HDD and DVD…聽Of course, clients need to have a local area network connection with the server and have network boot support. If you boot from USB, boot loader and operating systems will use the files on USB. If you boot from the LAN, the boot loader and operating systems will download the necessary files from the LAN.聽The advantage of network booting is that you will not need to attach boot devices to clients (except cables). If the data transfer rate in your LAN is slower than the read/write speed of boot devices such as USB, HDD or DVD, the speed is the downside of this method.

AIO Boot supports Windows installation from network boot.聽You can install Windows by integrating ISO and using the Windows Installer or booting into WinPE and installing Windows manually.聽Most Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Arch Linux are also supported.

To boot from LAN, you need to have a PXE server, a DHCP server, and a server to share files. You just need a computer to do all this.

AIO Boot uses Tiny PXE Server to create PXE server and DHCP server. Run AIOCreator.exe, select Run PXE and select mode to run Tiny PXE Server.

Tiny PXE Server will run and be preconfigured.

If the configuration is not correct, reconfigure it.

For Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, I use FreeNFS to create NFS servers. You do not need any further configuration.

If the files you need are already on the client, just use it. But if the files are not on the client computer, of course you need to get it from another computer. You can download it from the Internet but the speed will be much slower than the local area network.

First, copy all the necessary files to a folder and then share it. Or share a drive. See the Guide to Share a Folder or Drive from Microsoft.

Here are the steps I share the AIO Boot drive:

Since AIO Boot v0.9.7.5, you can install Windows from network boot using the Windows Installer.聽Here are step by step:

If the program reports that the Network Path is incorrect, it may be due to several other reasons:

If you only use a single computer to initialize the PXE server, you only need to enter the Network Path once.聽AIO Boot v0.9.8.7 supports reading Network Path from /AIO/networkpath.txt.聽Just add the Network Path to this file, you can add multiple Network Paths by adding multiple lines.聽The tool will try one by one.

If your computer has an account and password, add them behind the Network Path separated by a vertical bar (“|”).

If you then initialize the PXE server on another computer, this means that the Network Path, user name, and password have changed. Just enter the new information in /AIO/networkpath.txt.

The above steps will help you to install Windows easily. There is another method that you can use for many other purposes. That’s using WinPE.聽See instructions for installing Windows from WinPE for more details.

AIO Boot also supports booting and installing many Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, CentOS, Arch Linux…聽Just run AIOCreator.exe and integrate the Linux distributions. Then boot from the LAN, it will appear in the iPXE menu if it is supported.

Here is an incomplete list of Linux distributions that support booting from a LAN:

AIO Boot also supports many other tools like Acronis, Norton Ghost, PartitionGuru, Terabyte…

If you do not have computers for testing, you can test this feature through VMware Workstation. Wish success!