CD/DVD Rom emulation - no install

**BOB IROC** · June 10th, 2008, 07:35 PM

Anyone know of a Virtual CD/DVD Rom emulator program that can be launched to give the ability to load CD/DVD images such as ISOs without needing to be installed. My work just got me a nice 16GB USB flash drive and I have many requests to install part or all of Adobe CS3 on workstations now that we have purchased a site license. The problem is many of our workstations have only CD-Roms and CS3 comes on DVD. It would be nice for me to be able to load this ISO on my flash drive (and ISOs of other commonly used programs) and then be able to just launch the Virtual CD/ROM drive app, mount the ISO and install. Then quickly disconnect the Virtual ROM drive and move along.

We are hoping to be able to purchase the Altiris Client Management Suite soon so I know I can use that to distribute software, but that is not a definate and I have had very little luck of getting our older version of Ghost to work with the adobe suites.

**rgharper** · June 10th, 2008, 09:06 PM

Microsoft's Virtual CD program works just fine for this.

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...olpanel_21.exe

Just put the files in this SFX-EXE on the same removable drive as the ISO files and have fun!

**BOB IROC** · June 10th, 2008, 09:19 PM

Originally Posted by rgharper

Microsoft's Virtual CD program works just fine for this.

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...olpanel_21.exe

Just put the files in this SFX-EXE on the same removable drive as the ISO files and have fun!

Wow, didn't know microsoft had a virtual rom program.

I was reading the readme file and it said something about copying the VCDrom.sys to the system32 folder. I am assuming I would need to do this on the machine I plan to mount the virtual drive on. Hell I should probably put the sys file on all my images when I make them for this year. Hopefully we will get the Altiris and the Hardware independent imaging solution. Stupid school board and their need to have 14 meetings before they can approve a budget.

**rgharper** · June 20th, 2008, 09:34 AM

Originally Posted by BOB IROC

Wow, didn't know microsoft had a virtual rom program.

I was reading the readme file and it said something about copying the VCDrom.sys to the system32 folder. I am assuming I would need to do this on the machine I plan to mount the virtual drive on.

Don't worry about that requirement (and sorry it took me so long to reply!) - I have them on a thumb drive and it works just fine that way. You have to "browse" to where the system driver file is to load it but other than that it will work fine with the files on CD, floppy, thumb drive, whatever.