I have a .iso file that I want to mount on a PC (actually on an XP partition on a Mac). Can anyone walk me through the process? Double clicking it (as if it was on a Mac doesn’t work).
is there a mnt command in XP?
As far as I know, me not being an expert, you need to download something like magicdisc. It’s freeware, google it and click on the second, indented result. Download and use. It should be real simple.
Daemon tools will do this. The lite version is free
Microsoft has a free tool too
I’ve used a few of these tools and not been overly happy with them; they tend to install CD-ROM pseudo-drivers that make my regular CD-rom drives go wonky, and are hard to uninstall. There’s nothing like the seamless integration of .iso and .dmg files on the Mac.
However, if you’re running Windows 7, you CAN mount virtual hard drive (.vhd) files (and even boot from them!), so if your original tool can build the partition as .vhd rather than an ISO (and you’re in Win7), you could do that.
Otherwise, I’ve found the easiest way to deal with .iso files in Windows is just to burn them to a re-writable CD/DVD, do what I want with it, then erase it for the next one. Win7 (and maybe Vista) have .iso burning built in–for older systems you can download the CDBURN and DVDBURN command line tools from Microsoft (they’re targeted at servers, but they work on the non-server OSes.)
Seconded. Great little program, and it’s never caused any problems or conflicts with my hardware optical drives.
Another ‘me too’ for Daemon Tools - I’ve used it quite a lot and have not experienced any technical problems with it.
I do seem to remember that the installer on the latest version wanted to install some toolbar or other, which I declined, and I think there were some registration nags after install, but they could be configured to go away.
Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive will also do this very nicely, for free.
I love deamon tools, but some game DRM (securom?) will demand you uninstall it before playing the game.
I used it in the past*, and I wondered how much longer it would be before it was on the blacklist. I always hoped they’d come up with some way around it, like changing the description and filename so it wouldn’t be detected.
*When The Sims 2 came out. To this day I hate having to insert a CD to play a game. To me this eliminates the purpose of the hard drive, which was made so that you didn’t have to keep swapping disks all the time to run different programs.
Recent versions of Daemon Tools change the device driver filename on each boot and pick a random “brand/model” string for the emulated device. On my PC, the Daemon Tools drive is called a “QPCVA Y7KD2VW1MZ”, for example.
Right, but that’s not exactly Daemon Tools’ fault.
I think consumers should be refusing to buy from manufacturers that won’t let you install legal software on your own computer if you want to play their games.
Oh I agree, but its important to mention this if he’s using one of those games.
That sounds like the sort of thing that might generate a false positive for antivirus programs - has that ever happened to you? Also, doesn’t that mean the previous instances of the driver are all going to be lurking somewhere, inactive, but present in the registry?
I’ve often used Daemon Tools to mount ISOs for installing software. For some SW packages, the installation process includes one or more system restarts, which means that the installer won’t find the virtual disk until you remount it. This may or may not prevent a successful installation, but in case it does you can always get around it by copying the mounted image to a folder on your HD then working from that.
If you tell AVG 8.5 to scan for rootkits, it will find the Daemon Tools driver but can’t “clean” it (because the file gets renamed after boot, so the loaded driver points to a non-exisistent on-disk file).
The registry doesn’t get clogged up with this - at any given time, there’s only one instance of the driver configured. If the device name changed on each reboot, then you’d see that sort of problem. But the driver name can change.
Take a look at the “Automount” option in Daemon Tools. If Autostart is enabled, Automount will re-mount image(s) at boot time. The only issue that can arise is if the image is somewhere that needs user intervention, like a network share that isn’t reconnected at login or needs a username/password.
Sure, but with other instances of driver change (for example, hardware USB devices plugged into a different port each time), there will only be one instance visible, but the inactive (nonpresent) ones are still there (and not easily visible, except by the sort of jiggery pokery as described in this thread)
Not sure if that would also apply to virtual device drivers… does the Daemon Tools drive appear in Device Manager?
Yes. I have two of them right now, both showing as:
OHC YV41QNC SCSI CdRom Device
Thanks Turble - it would be interesting then to see if lots of nonpresent devices are being left each time it changes the ID. The ordinary device manager view can’t show nonpresent devices, only hidden ones. Do you fancy trying this:
Open a command prompt window: Click Start>Run and type **CMD **<enter>
Set an environment variable - in the command window, type:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
(a space after ‘set’, no spaces either side of =)
(then press enter)
Then type: start devmgmt.msc <enter>
Then in the device manager window that opens, click view>show hidden devices
Then see if there are any greyed-out device entries for CD ROM drives
Under DVD/CD-ROM drives it shows my 3 real physical drives, 2 MagicISO drives (I uninstalled MagicISO several months ago), and the OHC YV41QNC SCSI CdRom Device listing for the Daemon Tools drives – I now have 3 listed with that same ID because I experimented a bit; removed all of them and rebooted, added a third and rebooted … it appears to show any that have ever been used … but all three Daemon drives have the same ID, whereas the MagicISO drives are listed as:
MagicISO Virtual DVD-ROM0000
MagicISO Virtual DVD-ROM0001
I also see that under Disk drives it lists everything that has at some point been connected … cameras, USB thumb drives, GPS units, and external hard drives.
Oh, and yes, the drives not currently active are greyed out.