Mounting ISO files as Virtual Drives

A common challenge faced by most tech-savvy folks is handling ISO files. ISO is a format for binary images of CD-ROMs, normally the ISO 9660 file system. The traditional way to access their contents is to burn the ISO image to a CD.

A blogger was able to digg out a utility provided by Microsoft to mount ISO images to a virtual hard drive directory. This utility is absolutely unsupported by myself, Microsoft, or aliens on Vogon. Basically, an ISO-file becomes a drive letter in your 'My Computer'.

It requires you to copy a virtual device driver to your [windowssystem32drivers directory, and then mount the ISO image as a virtual drive using the Virtual CD Control Panel.

In case the file moves from the Microsoft site, I am providing a link to the "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP" utility - again, under no warranties, implicit or assumed.



Another tool that does more, and IS supported, is Daemon Tools

Technorati Tags: iso, microsoft, cd, cd-rom, technology, how-to, utility, tweak, virtual+drive
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