If you are like most business computer users, you have traveled with your laptop and have needed your Microsoft Office CD or some other CD to install an additional feature or to make a quick change to your configuration. You also probably know that it is not practical to carry around CDs for all the software products installed on your laptop. However, with a free add-on from Microsoft you can take all your CDs with you as ISO images and then load them into a virtual CD and use them as if you had the physical CDs with you.
First, some explanations: An ISO image of a CD is a file that typically is stored with the extension ISO. This file contains an exact duplicate of the original CD. You can use it to create a clone of the original. When using the Microsoft Virtual CD software, you can load that image into memory and see it as a drive letter on your machine. This allows you to install additional tools from it or to make configuration changes to your system.
You can download the free Microsoft software here. (It is designed for Windows XP.)
If you don’t know how to make ISO images of your CDs, you can use a free tool like Alex Feinman’s ISO Recorder or you can use a paid tool like Roxio CD Creator. Alex has versions of the ISO recorder available for XP (with or without any service packs), Windows 2003 and Vista.
Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting
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