An “ISO” file is just a image of an optical disc. There are three ways to use an ISO file:
- Burn it on a disk.
- Make it look like you put it on a disk.
- Use one of the popular archiving utilities like Winrar, 7Zip to extract some or all of the files you need.
Burn the ISO file on a disk.
Using a CD or DVD burning program like Nero, ImgBurn etc write the ISO disk image to an actual disk. ISO files are frequently used to distribute DVD or CD images, for example if you download a games CD it’s most likely to be an ISO file. All you need to do is burn it on a disc and get the complete disk with all the files and folders that were contained in the image.
Mount the ISO file as if it were a disk.
There are several utilities out there that will mount an ISO file as if it were a disk drive. There is one very small free tool by Microsoft (no longer supported by them though) to mount ISO files. It’s called VCdControlTool. It’s not a very user friendly tool but works good.
Here is the read me file:
System Requirements
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Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional
Installation instructions
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1. Copy VCdRom.sys to your %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder.
2. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
3. Click “Driver control”
4. If the “Install Driver” button is available, click it. Navigate to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and click Open.
5. Click “Start”
6. Click OK
7. Click “Add Drive” to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click “Add Drive” until an unused drive letter is available.
8. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click “Mount”.
9. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click “OK”. UNC naming conventions should not be used, however mapped network drives should be OK.
You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. When you are finished you may unmount, stop, and remove the driver from memory using the driver control.
How to create ISO files?
Creating ISO files is a convenient way to backup data or share them. ImgBurn, is one of the easiest tools to use for this purpose. Just insert your CD, tell ImgBurn where to place and what to name the ISO file, and push a button and ISO file is created.