I hate downloading programs that will clutter my hard drive and bog down my system. So Microsoft’s Virtual CDRom Control Panel for Windows XP was a treat – only 59kb and it would allow me to mount iso images without any fuss.

But when I got a system with Windows Vista pre-installed, the word on the street was that I would no longer be able to use VCCDRCP, that it simply didn’t work.

But I think I stumbled upon a simple trick to make it work.

The problem everyone had encountered was that the added drives wouldn’t appear in Windows Explorer (i.e. the image you mounted to the drive you added wouldn’t appear in Computer). But just because Computer doesn’t display the added drive doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The trick is to use VCCDRCP itself as the file explorer.

Here’s the step-by-step process to make Virtual CDRom functional in Windows Vista.

1. Download Virtual CDRom Control Panel and unzip it to your desktop.
2. Right-click VCdControlTool.exe and select Run as Administrator.
3. Click on Driver Control …
4. Click on Install Driver …, navigate to the Desktop, and double-click VCdRom.sys.
5. Click Start.
6. Click OK.
7. Click Add Drive.
8. Highlight the drive (probably Z:) then click Mount.
9. Navigate to the disc image you want to mount and double-click it.
10. NOW – if you look in My Computer, the added drive (Z:, for example) probably won’t show. INSTEAD, click on Mount AGAIN.
11. Now, instead of looking for a disc image in the Open dialogue window, navigate to Computer and the drive you added should appear as you expected.
12. Use this Open dialogue window to navigate the files on the disc image. You may have to select “All Files (*.*)” from the pull-down menu for Files of Type at the bottom of the dialogue window. Don’t double-click any files because then Virtual CDRom will try to Mount them. Instead, if you want to open a file, right-click it and select Open.
13. After you’re done using the mounted image:
14. Close the Open dialogue window.
15. Click Eject.
16. Highlight the drive you had added and click Remove Drive.
17. Click on Driver Control …
18. Click Stop.
19. Click Remove Driver …
20. Click OK.
21. Close VCCDRCP.

So the keys, obviously, are steps 10-12. Most people using Vista stop at 9, go to Computer to find the added drive, can’t find it, search Google for solutions, can’t find one, then break down and install some other image-mounting program (Daemon Tools, etc.). But chances are you don’t need to.

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