"David Ehrmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I'm just wondering, why are PXE implementations generally poor?

Because engineers are generally incompetent?  :-)

Honestly, I have no idea.  But they really do seem to be pretty sad.

> The only installation methods for Longhorn will be PXE and bootable
> CDs.  It seems putting some effort in would help.

Then I suspect PXE stacks will ultimately be good enough to boot
Windows PE and useless for anything else.  BIOSes in general seem to
be headed in a similar direction.

Are you saying Longhorn will no longer have the 16-bit winnt.exe or
the 32-bit winnt32.exe installers?  (Do you have a reference handy?)
If so, that is bad news for Unattended.

We could switch to Windows PE, that costs money (?), which is contrary
to the spirit of the project.

We could use the bootable CD, but then it is hard to create
unattend.txt on the fly.  Once the CD boots, we will not get control
again until after the OS installation is done, which is too late.

We could invoke the bootable CD from some sort of emulated environment
under Linux (Bochs? dosemu? Wine?).  This would let us customize
unattend.txt before booting the CD on the virtual machine.  But the
virtual hardware might be different from the physical hardware,
possibly causing the wrong device drivers to be installed, the wrong
HAL to be selected, and so on...

This does not bode well for the future.

 - Pat


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