Saturday, June 19, 2010

Virtual CD for CD-less computers

Issue: I recently bought a little mini computer for the kids that comes without a CD drive.  Kids need to run some programs that are CD based.

Quick: Download Free Virtual CD software and run from ISO images

Visual/ Learning:
MagicISO.com has a free tool for creating a virtual software based CD drive. 
Download and install the software on the CD-less computer.

Create a ISO image of your CD on another computer that has a CD drive.
I use Nero but you can use any burning software that support creation of ISO files.
I created a share on my computer with the CD rom drive so that I can copy over the network to my other computer.
Connect to the share from the CD-less computer
Copy the ISO file over to the CD-less computer hard disk (wherever is convenient)
Right click the system tray icon for the virtual CD manager
Select Virtual CD/DVD-ROM from the menu
Point it to the ISO file you created for your CD.
You can not access the CD drive and it looks just like you have your CD loaded in a physical CD drive.