Mounting a disk image with Windows tools only

Coming from the *NIX/Mac world I frequently find myself mounting ISO images as local disks for software installation, etc.

The same requirement recently came up for me on a Windows platform and I was a little stumped as I did not want to spend any money on this (as I see this as an intrinsic part of the the OS) by buying Alcohol or Daemon Tools.

To my surprise Microsoft actually has a (unsupported) tool (Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel) and driver that provides virtual CD-ROM services.

Unfortunately the solution is XP-only. Download the executable above and install the service. Its readme is quite short and to the point so getting this going is pretty easy.

Have fun!