ISO toys

Posted on November 18, 2005 One Comment

Where have I been? Why was I not notified? How come nobody told me about these things?

Sheesh, sometimes I feel so out of touch. Today, I learned about two useful ISO related tools that I suppose the rest of the world has had for years.

Isorecorder

ISO Recorder is a tool (power toy) for Windows XP, 2003 and now Windows Vista, that allows (depending on the Windows version) to burn CD and DVD images, copy disks, make images of the existing data CDs and DVDs and create ISO images from a content of a disk folder.

Yep, a “burn iso to CD” Power Toy. How cool is that?
Win XP Virtual CD Rom Control Panel: (that’s a direct download from Microsoft, there really is no web page). Just as you might surmise, it’ll mount an ISO and treat it as a CD. A bit crude, but the price is right. Here’s the install info:

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.

Side note about that last one: I found many references to the Microsoft ISO Control panel, but all the sites had you downloading it from them. That made me… leary. Ok, a few had direct downloads like I do, but still… Finally, after 10 minutes, I found a page in MSDN (search for iso and expand that section) that mentioned the dang thing and had a link to the .exe. But crap, what an awful URL to try and write down. I was somewhat stymied for a minute on how to capture that url. Then the lightbulb went off. Right clicked on the link and from Firefox, select “Bookmark this Link”. Now I have it as a favorite. Ok, open my bookmarks, right-click on it and select “Properties”. Voila — the url.

Tags: CD, iso, microsoft, msdn, virtual-cd