PowerISO

Overview

Disc images turn up constantly even on machines that have not had an optical drive in a decade. Operating system installers, software distributions, disc backups and virtual machine media all arrive as images, and Windows on its own can mount one common format and do nothing else with it. PowerISO handles the rest: reading the formats Windows does not, editing the contents of an image without unpacking and rebuilding it, converting between formats, and writing a bootable stick or disc.

This build has the licensing applied, which removes the two restrictions that make the trial useless: the three hundred megabyte cap on files it will edit or create, and the registration prompt on every launch. The virtual drive component, the bootable media writer and the archive handling are all fully enabled.

Mounting and editing images

The virtual drive component mounts an image as a drive letter so its contents are readable by anything on the machine, with several virtual drives available at once. That covers the common case of an installer that expects to be run from a disc.

Editing is the more useful capability. You can open an image, add files, delete files, rename and rearrange, and save, without extracting the whole thing to disk and rebuilding it. On a multi gigabyte installer image where one file needs replacing, that is minutes rather than an hour, and the boot information is preserved through the edit so the image still boots afterwards.

Creating, converting and burning

New images can be built from a folder, from a set of files, or from a physical disc, with the file system type and the boot configuration set explicitly. Conversion between image formats is direct, which matters because different tools insist on different ones and converting through an extraction is both slow and lossy where boot information is involved.

Burning covers optical media where a drive exists, and writing a bootable USB stick where one does not. The stick writer handles the boot sector properly for both the older and the modern firmware modes, which is the part that separates a stick that boots from one that does not.

Archives, verification and the small things

It also reads and writes the common archive formats, so it doubles as a competent archiver if you do not already have one. Split images across several files are handled, along with the disc description files that accompany some formats.

Checksums can be calculated and compared against a published value, which is the step people skip and then wonder why an installer failed halfway through. There is also a compare function for checking two images against each other, and an image can be verified against the physical disc it was made from.

What you get

• Mount images as virtual drives, several at once
• Edit image contents directly without unpacking and rebuilding
• Boot information preserved through an edit
• Create images from folders, files or a physical disc
• Direct conversion between the common image formats
• Bootable USB stick writing for both firmware modes
• Optical burning where a drive is present
• Common archive format reading and writing
• Checksum calculation, image comparison and disc verification

Inside the archive

• PowerISO installer, 32 and 64 bit
• Virtual drive component
• Language packs for the interface list shown above
• Notes on writing bootable sticks for each firmware mode

System requirements

Installing it

1. Run the installer as administrator.
2. Allow the virtual drive component when the system prompts for the driver.
3. Choose how many virtual drives you want in settings. Two is usually enough.
4. Turn off the update check so the build stays where it is.
5. Restart once if the virtual drive does not appear immediately after install.

Mirrors

Release history

Questions about this release

Comments

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