Win XP - Clean Install with networking

[R_Lehr]

Our company has made the decision to upgrade all workstations to Win XP Pro. We have a small mix of hardware - mostly HP and Dell using 3-Com 10/100 Mbit nics connecting to a Win NT Domain which includes an Exchange Server and Web Server.

The decision is firm to do a "clean" XP install. All files from department/employees will be stored on the server.

For the first phase, I plan to swap loaner boxes to departments and bring in their boxes to the IT shop to do the install. In the second phase the install will be done at the department location.

The CAB files for the multi-user licensed Win XP will remain on the server. I'll need to FDisk each box, get network connectivity, navigate to the CAB folder and install.

What am I up against? I'm trying to remember how to load Nic drivers, protocols, etc. to get connectivity. I don't remember if I had to install MS-DOS - or if I had a batch file - or both.

Any help would really be appreciated.

Thanks . . . RL

[Roger Faucher · Accepted solution]

I wouldn't attempt it the way you're considering. Your machines should all be able to boot from the XP Pro CDROM media, then within SETUP, delete the partition and do a fresh install.

What am I missing?

Roger