Peter's Gekko

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Iso Images and Vista

More and more software is rolled out in the form of an ISO image. You can do two things with these: mount them in a virtual drive or burn them to (re-)writable disk. Both options were cumbersome and still are under Vista.

A lot of DVD burning packages, like the popular Nero, support both options. I have a great dislike for software like Nero. It takes longer to download than a Vista RTM and the major part of the download consist of extra crapware which usually ruins your system configuration. Besides that many a virtual drive does not support the format of the iso's distributed. MS CTP's are notorious for this. I used to be a big fan of Daemon tools, a freeware tool which have saved my day on several occasions. Now there is a DT version for Vista as well. Looks like freeware but it is spyware. Not until the setup you are informed it will also install some adware. Do you always read EULA's ? Or just click next, next, finish ? Bad, bad, bad. End of confidence, end of my recommendation for Daemon Tools.

So now I'm burning all images to disk. Using a rewritable to limit the amount of junk my office produces. A great tool is isoRecorder. It is a very nifty tool. After installing you only need to right click an iso image file to burn it to disk. Works like a charm. But to burn a disk you always have to start with an iso file. The second part of the isoRecorder package is an extra option in the folder context menu (right click) which should create an iso file out of the folder's content. Should, in my experience this part of isoRecorder always crashes. Both the Vista and the xp version, the latter with the notorious 80004005 error. I don't know why and I can't find anything on the web.

So when I want to archive things I need a simple program to create the ISO file. Finding one took some time. There are loads and loads of packages around but they are either filled with ad-ware or are limited to a maximum of 300mb while evaluating. Finally I found something nice. Finalburner looks and works just fine.

Simple and honest package and really free. The only ads are the ones for their pro packages.

Published Jan 22 2007, 03:27 AM by pvanooijen

Filed under: Chatter

Comments

CynicalDoctor said:

A great replacement for Daemon Tools is Virtual Clone Drive (http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html). Works great on Vista, is free and adware/spyware free. I found out about this from Scot Hanselman's blog (http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MountingAnISODiscImageUnderWindowsVistaRC2AndUpdatedVistaTools.aspx). So far seems to work form MS ISOs as well.

Hope this helps.

# January 22, 2007 5:00 AM

Bob said:

IZArc is a great archive tool that can also open ISO images (plus convert from one format to another - NRG > ISO)

# January 23, 2007 7:10 AM

pvanooijen said:

Thanks for the links.

@bob: IZarc can read iso files, but cannot create new ones.

# January 24, 2007 4:20 AM

Steve said:

Bob: Thanks for the IZarc reccomendation - brill! I always used to use Daemon Tools, but it's full of spyware now. I use MagicDisc on WinXP but it refuses to work with my Vista install. IZarc is just what I need to convert those pesky NRGs into ISO. Cheers dude!

# March 10, 2007 4:11 AM

Chris G. Jones said:

This tool is so nice and a better alternative to MagicISO, Daemon Tools, ISO Recorder(v3RC1) or anything else that I have come across. I used version 1.4.0.34 of this tool on Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (32 bit version), and it burned disks from ISO files without problem. I also created some data disks containing various exe files and that worked well, too. The app is easy to learn and use, and truly is free (no restrictions), and from my experiences I would highly recommend it to anyone as a great burning alternative to any burning apps that cost money. Thanks for putting this info in your blog, Peter!

# October 23, 2007 3:15 PM

Zulbarry said:

Iso Recorder is okay if you add the files to burn to a folder, name it something unique and then burn. Also remove any old iso's with the same name first!

worked for me!

# January 30, 2008 7:24 AM