What is PXE booting used for?

PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) allows Active@ KillDisk to be launched directly over the network, without the need to prepare a bootable USB drive or disc for each individual computer. Instead of physically visiting every machine with removable media, an administrator prepares the boot image and network environment once, and afterward any computer on the network can boot straight into Active@ KillDisk simply by selecting network boot in the BIOS/UEFI.

This approach is particularly valuable in environments where large numbers of machines need to be erased — corporate IT departments, data centers, asset disposition (ITAD) companies, or organizations decommissioning equipment at scale. It removes the bottleneck of manually preparing and swapping physical boot media, reduces the chance of human error, and makes it possible to erase many machines in parallel across the network. Combined with a startup script, PXE boot can even be configured to launch erasure automatically and unattended, as soon as a machine powers on and boots from the network.

For more information on launching Active@ KillDisk directly over the network, please refer to our User Guide.