I downloaded a game and all that I got was an .iso file. My computer doesn’t know
what to do with that. What do I do? How do I install .iso files?
ISO files are becoming more and more common as a
delivery mechanism for assorted types of both software and data.
An ISO file is nothing more than an image of a disc. Typically, it’s a
complete image of either a CD or DVD.
Which gives you at least one clue as to one of the options.
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Also, when you install, be sure to opt-out of any additional, unrelated
software that may be offered.
After running Daemon Tools Lite, a small icon will appear in the
notification area:
Double-click that to get the Daemon Tools Lite application.
In the application, right-click the drive that appears in the lower pane:
Click the Mount option, which opens a file selection
dialog. Select the ISO file that you want to work with and click OK.
Once mounted, Windows may run Auto-Play on the “disc”:
The act of mounting the image as a drive makes Windows believe that a new
disc has been inserted and thus it applies the same operations that it would
were it any normal removable-media drive.
You can certainly allow any auto-play action to happen, if that’s what you
need – in most cases, the result would be the install of the ISO that you’re
looking for.
Alternately, you can open the virtual drive, which will have been assigned a
new drive letter, in Windows Explorer:
Here you can see the ISO that I selected (an older copy of a System Rescue CD)
opens as drive “D:”, a virtual drive created by Daemon Tools to expose the
contents of the ISO file. You can use this drive like any CD.
In many cases, you’ll find a setup.exe or other installation program that you
could then run directly to install the contents of your ISO.
Naturally, you can unmount the ISO (more or less equivalent to ejecting the
CD) and select a different ISO to mount.
Next Steps
There are additional ways to access the contents of an ISO, outlined in
What are
ISO files and how do I open them?
If you want to burn an ISO to CD or DVD to install it, grab a copy of
ImgBurn,
and then follow my step-by-step
instructions on burning an ISO to CD or DVD.
I use an ISO mounting program called Virtual CloneDrive made by SlySoft. It works really well.
The easiest though slow way is to extract the iso using 7-zip. Afterwards, you can just run the installer in the extracted files.
I prefer Slysoft’s Virtual CloneDrive for mounting ISOs.
You can also extract some ISO’s with 7-Zip.
Quick tip: If you need to edit an ISO, you don’t need to install shareware. Just extract it with 7-Zip, edit the files on your hard drive, and recompile it with ImgBurn or another tool.
Also ImgBurn can be used to extract a disc right to ISO. This I use for some of my older games that have noisy CDs (fast drive) but require the CD to play.
Also if you have a weird CD image format, install the program needed to mount it, then use ImgBurn to turn it into an ISO.
I’d also like to note that sometimes if you try to play certain games or use certain software (even if you’re using a legit CD) they won’t run if you have a virtual drive installed. It’s a pain, usually if you disable the drive temporarily it works.
Reading the post by Andrew, could I use that method to make a back up copy of Wii game disks? I have had to replace several disks at full pop due to scratches etc. I would like to make a copy of my game discs to keep the originals undamaged.
Good article…another option is to burn it to a disc with Ashampoo Studio 6 FREE edition. Thus you have a free DVD/CD/Bluray utility as well as the game (or other ISO) saved for reinstall.
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Do you think, I’m correct?
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