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Build a network boot disk for VMware guest VMs

by Roger Lund

Jason Boche has a write up on Building a network boot disk for VMware guest VMs on this Blog


A person recently asked me via Email how to create a bootable MS-DOS diskette with networking capability for use in VMware guest VMs. Rather than privately isolate the knowledge in an email conversation, I figured the least I could do after going through the steps is to share it in a blog post so that it may be cataloged in Google for everyone’s benefit.

There are several methods to creating a network boot disk. Some easier. Some more difficult. In the interest of time and leveraging the innovation of others, I’ll turbo charge today’s procedure by using Bart’s Network Boot Disk. Frankly I’m not interested in modifying network boot disk files by hand which was one of the purposes behind Bart’s solution – making the creation of boot disks easier. Note, to use this procedure, you admit to owning a Microsoft Windows 98 operating system license.

Thanks for the info Jason.

I personally use Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk Building the Disk is quite easy, and here are the steps I use.

1. Follow Building the Disk
2. Setup the Login Script
3. when you boot and the menu comes up, fill in the network information you need. IE, Domain, User, password. No worries, it is all secure.
4. Use Winimage or rawwrite to make a disk image, and upload that to ESX. ( note, I rename the image to the .flp file extension that ESX uses. )

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