First off if you are not familiar with ISO files, an ISO file is a file that is a disk image of a a CD disk or DVD disk. It is like a copy of the entire CD or DVD into a ISO image on your hard drive. These were typically used for copying or distributing a disk contents over the network.

This article does not condone the illegal copying of software. There are many legal uses for ISO images, and this article addresses those. For instance as a member of the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) I can receive certain software from Microsoft (legally) downloadable over the internet. This is the main purpose of mounting ISO images for me.

Originally the only thing that an ISO file for was good for was to use as the source when copying a CD or DVD to disk. You would download the ISO, then start up your CD or DVD copying software like Nero, and you would copy the ISO onto a DVD or CD disk.

In the past I have used programs like Nero, Virtual Clone Drive to mount an ISO under windows Vista, or Windows XP. After installing Windows 7, I discovered that these tools no longer worked for me to mount an ISO. I have hard that Daemon Tools has a component to do the same thing, but I doesn't work under windows 7 either.

I am sure over time all of these products will work eventually work under Windows 7, but currently the don't.

After some searching, I discovered that there was another product out there that would allow you to mount ISO files. This was PowerISO.

PowerISO does much more than mount ISO files, but I wasn't interested in the rest of that. There is a demo version of power ISO available that is limited after the trial period, but still allows you to mount ISO files.


After using PowerISO for a few days now, I highly recommend it as a tool to mount ISO files. I don't know about its other features, but it is fabulous for mounting ISO files under Window s 7.

Update Sept 20, 2009
I have been using PowerISO for 2 weeks now. The free trial has expired, and the ISO mounting component is still working great under Windows 7.

I have been using Windows Server 2008 for several months, along with HyperV running several virtual machines. Today when I arrived at work, I found that my virtual machines weren't running, and were missing.

When I tried to re-add the virtual machines, I received the following error from Hyper-V.

Failed to add device 'Microsoft Synthetic Ethernet Port'.

After receiving this message I tried a reboot, then tried adding the virtual machine again, with no network and still received the same message.

Failed to add device 'Microsoft Synthetic Ethernet Port'.

Two things that had changed were
1. Trend Micro Antivirus had been installed yesterday.
2. A windows update for Internet Explorer was installed and forced a reboot last night (thanks Microsoft).

The first thing that I tried after the initial reboot was to uninstall Trend Micro Antivirus, and attempt to add the missing virtual machines back in again. It worked. Trend Micro was indeed the culprit.


They say that computers and software are there to make us more productive, but thats not the case today. 1 hour wasted tracking down the issue doing the reboots, and reconfiguring the virtual machines.

I hope that someone finds this posting and uninstalls their Trend Micro antivirus before they waste a bunch of time trying other things.

I just created a new website to submit questions and get answers.

Try it out at http://questions.civicvoice.com/

I am still working on it, but it looks like it could be fun.