If we need to do OS reload on a remote machine, how can the network boot be enabled on the client machine without making any changes in the BIOS ??
I am in a try to develop a control panel, in which this feature is included. i.e., fully automated OS reload and thinking of using the pxe boot. But enabling and disabling boot from network is a problem. Any work around, please ?
First, since your question is not programming related, I suggest you pose it again on the sister site serverfault.com. You might get more/better answers there.
Second, I do not think you will be able to remotely activate PXE on arbitrary machines. Maybe this works when you have Intel's AMT (Active Management Technology) on those machines, but then you already have BIOS access. But nevertheless you could activate PXE boot on all machines and from your PXE server, selectively offer boot images only to those machines you want to. All other machines would then just boot the installed OS. The FAI (Fully Automatic Install) system uses that approach, but is Linux only, AFAIK.
I agree with Dubu that reliable enable/disable of PXE boot in the BIOS across heterogeneous target hardware is not readily achievable. The better suggestion is to configure all your target machines to include PXE prior to local disk in their configured boot order always. You can PXE boot to something like PXELINUX and have the default choice be a local disk boot. Then you can selectively target particular machines to PXE boot into a network loaded OS (for OS reinstallation purposes) by configuring symlinks with the target machine's MAC address inside the PXELINUX TFTP root.
Hacker approach: Use the bootloader to load GPXE from the harddisk.
You'll need a version that fits to your NIC: Images for many hardware types and booting methods can be generated at ROM-o-matic. Use the PCI ID from the NIC to programmatically select the version that fits best. People may also have add-on network cards, e.g. for gigabit LAN.
This way you don't need to fiddle with the mainboard and network card specific ways to turn PXE on.