Most of you have burned CDs or DVDs from ISO files. If you buy Windows online, you download an ISO file. Many movies you buy come as an ISO file. ISO files have to burned to CD or DVD before you can use them right? Well not so fast. Did you know there are several free and commercial programs that allow you to create a virtual CD/DVD drive, so you can use the ISO file directly without burning it to CD or DVD?
We’ve tried 3 of these programs, but there is one which is easier to use than the rest. It’s called WinCDEmu. This tiny program is so easy to use, all you have to do is install it and click on any ISO file and you can use the ISO file without burning it to a CD or DVD. So if you’ve downloaded a ISO image you can use it without burning it to CD or DVD first. This is how we installed Windows 8 Developer Preview. We never burned the ISO to a disk – we installed Windows 8 directly from the ISO file. WinCDEmu worked like a real CD/DVD drive.
It’s only a 813KB download (not even a megabyte). It’s hard to believe that a program so small cam do such a big job. Sometimes we’re amazed by the free programs we find. This is a really useful program packed into a very small file. If you work with ISO files often, you can skip the burning (you can still burn the file to CD/DVD if you wish) and use the ISO file just by clicking on it. How much easier could it get?
This is brief description of the program the author gives on his Web site:
“WinCDEmu is an open-source CD/DVD/BD emulator – a tool that allows you to mount optical disc mages by simply clicking on them in Windows Explorer. If you have downloaded an ISO image and want to use it without burning it to a blank disc, WinCDEmu is the easiest way to do it.”
You can download and or learn more about WinCDEmu from here: http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/
WinCDEmu works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7 – both 32bit and 64bit systems. .