Mount a CDROM as a drive in XP?

[ThermalRunaway]

Hi everyone. I've got an application which I use regularly on my WindowsXP machine but it always requires the CD for key-validation purposes. The CD itself is not protected against copying so I can easily make a copy of my original and use that if I want to. It would be much more convenient for me if I could copy an image of the CD to my hardrive and have XP treat it as a mounted volume so that whenever I launch the application it'll access the image and run, without the need for me to hunt around for the CDROM all the time.

I've done some googling but I haven't turned up much on this. Anyone know if it's possible?

Brian

 

[Styx]

VirtualCD or DaemonTools is what you are after. It creates a virtual CDROM/DVD that allows you to mount an ISO image and XP treats it as if it was a real disk in a real drive

 

[ThermalRunaway]

Now why couldn't I get google to turn that up?? Thanks a lot Styx!

Brian

 

[ThermalRunaway]

Ok, well I downloaded VirtualCD, I created an iso image of the CD I wanted to mount, and then I succesfully mounted it so that Windows thinks it's a CDROM inserted into a CD drive. Unfortunately the applicaiton doesn't like it and complains that no disc is inserted, which is strange. Oh well!

Brian

 

[justDIY]

daemon tools is pretty good, but the best I've seen is Alcohol 120% ... it has pretty complex emulation, to fool many types of cd-detection software.

 

[PDubya]

Some applications are really dumb, in that they only look for the validation on the drive it was installed from. You may need to re-assign the drive letters so that your emmulated drive the same as your original drive letter for your CD-ROM. Also, some applications can detect emmulated drives - so that may pose an issue depending on what exactly it's using for validation.

If you give us what application it is, we may be able to help you more in detail.

 

[ThermalRunaway]

Ah I didn't realise that. Well, perhaps I could install the application again from the image (which has been setup as Z: ). Hopefully then I won't have to bother changing any drive letters around. Thanks for the tip.

The application I'm trying to use without the CD is "C for PIC Microcontrollers V2.0" by Matrix Multimedia. I quite often use this CD as a reference when I'm programming, and it's a pain if I want it and I can't find my CD.

Brian

 

[ParkingLotLust]

Id say go with Daemon Tools. Easy to use and it remounts the image on restart.