Solution - network boot disk error when server has over 2gb memory.

[Paul Ellering_1]

I have a HP 580 server with 3gb of memory and a HP 740 server with 8 gb of memory. I was trying to use a network boot disk to ghost the
server image and was running across memory errors due to boot disks having a 2gb memory limit.

I found a network boot disk (below) that did not have the 2gb memory limit error.

Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk for Microsoft
Networks

http://www.users.on.net/~driver/bootdisk/index.htm

http://www.users.on.net/~driver/bootdisk/cards.htm (many cards)

This bootdisk solved my 2 gb memory limitation. I was able to boot and ghost both servers. It had the gigabit drivers built in.

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Teledata boot disk had the same error even after I tried this solution: device=himem.sys /numhandles=128

http://tdonline.com/initialpage.htm

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http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/

I drove home to get an old set of dos 6.22 disks (never got the chance to install and use himem.sys)...

Barts boot disk gave me the same error after I had this message and tried this solution:

The xmsdsk.exe (ramdrive application) does not seem to be able to function correctly on computers with more than 2GB of RAM. I keep
getting the error "XMS get free mem error.".

Yes, I think this is a bug in xmsdsk.exe the author (Franck Uberto) does not have a machine with this amount of memory, so it's not easy
for him to fix it. But here is a workaround: Replace the himem.sys with himem.sys v3.10 (from Dos 6.22), this will provide 64MB XMS
memory as the maximum and xmsdsk.exe will not fail.

jun 16, 2003 - Updated note! Someone mailed me that removing the "/t" parameter for loading xmsdsk.exe solved his problem...

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Both Teledata and Barts bootdisks are superior to the Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk but the Universal gets around the 2gb limits on memory without any modifications. great for server booting.