Some larger software downloads, such as the Windows slipstreaming tool Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), are distributed as as an .iso file, which you need to burn to a CD or DVD in order to use. Or do you? To save you the bother of burning a disc, or to test it first, you can 'mount' the .iso file (turn it into a virtual CD or DVD),which makes it appear to Windows as an optical disc drive. All you need is an ISO mounting program such as Virtual CloneDrive from www.slysoft.com/en/.
Virtual CloneDrive works behind the scenes and can mount up to eight virtual disc drives at the same time. You can configure the software for the number of drives, as well as whether to automatically remount the drives when Windows restarts.
After it’s installed, you don’t need to run the program unless you want to modify the default settings or change the language. Virtual CloneDrive automatically flags all .iso files on your PC with a smiling sheep icon. To mount an .iso file as a virtual disc drive, either double-click the icon or right-click it and select ‘Mount (Virtual CloneDrive <driveletter>)’. Then click ‘Run StartCD.exe’ on the AutoPlay menu to open the disc. After it’s been mounted, you can access the virtual disc drive by double-clicking it in Computer (‘My Computer’ in XP). Once a disc has been mounted, the Unmount option is added to the smiling sheep context menu, which you can use to free up that drive letter for something else.
However, while WAIK is great at creating a custom 'slipstreamed' Windows installation disc, there's a problem if you want to create an .iso file for testing. Unfortunately, you can't use Virtual CloneDrive in this case because the mounted ISO will disappear when you restart your PC to run the virtual bootable disc. However, you can use a second level of virtualisation and virtualise an entire PC. After you have installed an operating system on the virtualisation software, you can mount the ISO from there and maintain the mounted ISO, when you restart the virtual computer, just as if there were a disc in the drive.
The two best freeware virtualisation programs are VirtualBox (www.virtualbox.org) and VMWare Player (www.vmware.com). They’ll run on any version of Windows XP or later.
Mount and run an .iso file with Virtual CloneDrive
