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Ubuntu Netboot install with Windows (PXE)

I’m the proud owner of a Dell X200 Laptop, which, due to it’s compact form factor (incredible seeing as it dates back to 2003!) lacks a CD-Rom and Floppy Disc Drive.  This makes installing operating systems a bit of a chore and seeing how my USB Pen Drive packed in at the weekend, the only install method I had avaliable to me was a NetBoot install via PXE (Preboot Executing Environment).

Usually this is a pretty straight forward afair, but I had a bit of a problem - may laptop would only find the TFTP server if it was directly wired to it via a crossover cable (no doubt my POS Speedlink router was partly to blame).  After a couple of hours of faffing I finally managed to get a succesfull install with the following steps:

1. Download a copy of TFTP32 for Windows
2. Directly wire your laptop to your desktop pc (which is running the TFTP server) with a crossover cable
3. Follow the Ubuntu Windows Server Netboot Wiki Entry to get the TFTP Server configured - make sure you set everything up to point towards your Router.  (ie: My router defaults to 192.168.1.254, so I set that as the gateway and gave the DHCP Server in TFTP32 a sensible range of IP Addresses to serve out.
   
4. When the laptop boots via PXE, follow the guide right up to the Network interface seletion (should be just after the Keyboard layout).
5. At this point, unplug the cross over cable and wire the laptop directly into the router, wait a couple of seconds for it to autosense the connection and then proceed with the Ubuntu install - it should discover your router and recieve a new IP Address via DHCP
6. Sit back and smile as your laptop succesfully downloads the required packages from the ubuntu archives.

Hope this helps someone out there