[ipxe-devel] SAN Boot Windows XP with USB-NIC.

[Michael Brown]

On Monday 21 Mar 2011 08:42:41 jerrycheng-hinet wrote:
> > That's very odd.  It would be interesting to know what causes this limit.
> > (For example, does a normal-sized "-s 1472" ping work over this USB NIC
> > when
> > it *isn't* being used by iPXE?)
> 
> I tested this item in Windows XP. The largest value that works over this
> USB-NIC (in windows xp) is "-s 1472".

Thanks for testing that.  I'd like to examine this NIC further: could you let 
me know the make and model so I can buy one for myself?

> After using the Windows XP image made from USB flash drive, I can
> successfully sanboot Windows XP via this USB-NIC.

Fantastic.  :)

> Since this USB-NIC only
> fits to USB 1.1, booting speed is extremely slow (took about 5 minutes from
> power on to windows xp operable).
> 
> Because the driver of this USB-NIC and PXE support is loaded from FDD ( it
> took more than 1 minutes to load driver and PXE), I tried to load iPXE
> directly from the USB flash drive. When I did this, iPXE seemed can't find
> the USB-NIC.
> 
> What should I do to make the USB-NIC workable while the iPXE is loaded from
> USB flash drive? Thanks very much!

You can't do this directly.  iPXE doesn't contain native drivers for your USB-
NIC; it is relying on the PXE support provided by the USB-NIC manufacturer.

You should, however, be able to transfer the contents of the FDD to a USB key 
and then boot from the USB key.  This should speed up the loading time.

Michael