The installation of the client environment begins with a simple DOS environment, booted from a floppy disk and logged into the NetWare server. In order to embed the drive letter (D:) into the registry for future use, we need to temporarily map that drive letter to the server so that our results from the install don't disappear with the RAM drive when the computer is rebooted. With all the pieces in place, we ran the Windows95 setup utility for the desired client machine, referring to the modified MSBATCH.INF (see "Modified MSBATCH.INF File" on page 98).

After setup's first run-through, a special subdirectory called SUBOOT is created under each client's Windows95 directory; it contains all the files required for the boot image. One file, MSDOS.SYS, is modified so that it contains the proper locations for the boot environment, as shown in "Modified MSDOS.SYS in SUBOOT Directory" at left. The actual image file, called NET$DOS.SYS, is then created by running the RPLIMAGE utility, found in the NETSETUP directory on the Windows95 CD-ROM. The resulting image file must be moved to the SYS:LOGIN directory of the NetWare server so that the client can access it when it's rebooted for the first time.

Upon rebooting, the installation should run to completion and the contents of the workstation's D:\Win95 directory should be compressed into a .ZIP file, which could be reconstituted locally on boot for a fresh environment. We used a .ZIP file because we found that it's a much faster download than numerous smaller files. Additionally, decompressing in a RAM drive is fast.

Since the Windows95 registry contains a lot of information about hardware, we created one image for each physical machine configuration we have in our environment. Another approach would be to create a single image and then import machine-specific information during boot. This latter approach could come in handy if you have special serialized hardware (like audio adapters) that requires unique entries in the registry. In this approach, the basic registry for each machine is merged with the specific components for the audio adapter installed in a particular machine.