Re: Diskless boot for win 95/98

[Michael Rendell <michael@cs.mun.ca>]

 > been there - done this: dont try it
 > eg. if you install office you get a big registry which cannt be loaded
 > during bootup ("invalid registry - please contact your sys admin")

This problem is caused by interaction between setmdir and win.com: setmdir
figures out where the registry is (in 16 bit dos mode), gets some needed
info from it and notes the size of the registry.  Setmdir is the one
with the registry size limitation (too big and it dies).  When win.com
gets going, it checks to see if the size of the registry matches what
setmdir told it - if there is a difference it dies.

  A work around is possible because setmdir puts a hook into the net utility
so that every time a network share is mounted/unmounted, it stats the registry
and updates the size info it passes to win.com.  So... what you do is have
two registries: one `small' (what you have just after win95 is installed) and 
the other big (what you have after office is installed).  You mount the
`machine share' (which has the small registry), run setmdir, copy the
big registry over the small registry, mount some random share (doesn't
matter what it is - set mdir will stat the registry and notice its bigger),
unmount the random share, and fire up win.com.  Win.com looks at the
size of the registry and is happy because it matches what setmdir said
it should be.

All very bizarre, but it works.  This solution was discovered by Tony Galway
when he was working at engineering here.

Michael
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