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Comment by nullindividual | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn’t use PXE at all! But I’ve been out of the computer imaging business for a long time, now. The folks that do that where I work simply activate Windows with Intune on first boot from the manufacturer, similar to how Macs are activated.

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PXE is still useful when you want to setup ~200 servers which are freshly installed in your racks and they have no OS on board, or when they need to be reinstalled in ~10 minutes, so you can revive another cattle in short order.

In my former industry, and my former line of work, we would never trust the integrity of an OS image on an SSD delivered from the manufacturer by standard courier (not e2e receipted CoC) without some means of verifying it on the receiving end e.g. checksum. Easy to do with network hardware, harder with PCs. Much simpler to just PXE-blast all the devices when they arrive.

It's quite a different world with Windows Autopilot pre-provisioning from the OEM. These images are customized to your specs, there's no Candy Crush shipping on pre-provisioned devices.

Windows Autopilot uses a PXE boot, where appropriate.

But how do you get Windows installed on the computer, for example if the disk is replaced?

Back to the manufacture it goes! Not a big deal in a medium to large business. I'm unsure how a small business would deal with it, but the smaller you go, the less likely you'd have a standardized image.

I think you probably skimmed my comment because I said personal use.

Having PXE has been helpful getting Linux on newer laptops. Saves messing around with usb sticks.

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