MacBook Pro won't find network boot disk My optical drive doesn't work on my MacBook Pro, and my Internet connection is too slow to use the recovery partition to download Lion. I have a disk and a Windows PC I can use on the same network.

I installed the disk sharing software from Apple on the PC, and used the remote install program that comes on the disc.

I hold down Option ⌥ when booting up my MacBook. It is plugged in via Ethernet to the same network, but the network disk never appears. If I press N then the network icon appears, pulsing, but it never finds the Windows shared disk.

What am I doing wrong? Will this work better if plug the Ethernet cable directly from the PC to the Mac, skipping over the network?
You need a network boot server to be running somewhere on the network as Macs can't just see another CD without more help. Internet recovery is Apple's way of solving this on the newer hardware.

Something like DeployStudio would be my first recommendation for a modern, free, and all in one setup. This tool will handle the network request from the Mac and provide it with software to run so that you can then start an installation. I don't know of a boot image that is capable of doing a remote disk installation so you might do some learning with net boot, but ultimately just go get a USB drive or get help from someone with the setup ready to do a restore. Many Apple Stores are set up to image a machine while you wait through the genius bar.