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I want to add a new permanent virtual CD/DVD drive on Windows 10 to mount an .iso image in it. It should work without using third-party software like PowerISO, WinCDEmu, or Daemon Tools Lite.

My built-in CD drive does not function properly and I need to mount the .iso image for booting, to test the .iso file.

Is this possible in Windows 10?

user219095
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Arjun Singh
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3 Answers3

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You indicate that you want to test booting from the .iso image. This is not possible because a virtual optical drive will not exist (yet) when the PC is booting. Emulating an optical drive on bare metal is only possible when the software that is booting (like Windows or Linux) explicitly supports this.

Instead, you can use a virtual machine to test the .iso image. One such virtual machine software is VirtualBox. It is free and open source.

After starting VirtualBox, create a new virtual machine (with or without virtual hard disk, as required). After creating the VM, you can open its properties and place the .iso image in its virtual optical drive. When you then power on the VM, it will boot like a normal PC.

Using a VM will allow you to test the boot process without having to restart your PC.

user219095
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You may want to live test an operating system. it is not possible to do so, utilizing the method you describe. Booting to an .ISO image takes place in a separate environment other than Windows ( before Windows loads ). Your best option, is to create a virtual machine inside Windows and test the .iso there. You can do it without the need of using 3rd party tools through Windows Hyper-V Here is a guide from Microsoft on how to do it in Windows 10

Should add, many OS distros allow you to live test the OS if your burn the image to an USB device. Linux distros and its variants are a good example of this

Lucky8
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NO, but probably YES if you want to do it the hard way:

Using software makes it easy to achieve but I think it's also possible using Windows' built-in command line tools. This is in no way related to mounting an image in Windows (which is integrated without using third-party tools), but only to boot your PC from an ISO (or VHD) file.

For others interested in using third-party software, this might be useful:

FifthAxiom
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