Thinkpads Forum

I will be going on a short weekend trip this week and was wondering if anyone knew of any way to run the software off of a CD without the actual CD. The reason I ask is because I would rather leave the ultrabase for my X41 at home. I will be trying to run Command & Conquer (Red Alert II) without the CD.

If I were able to run the files on the CD off of my hard drive or a thumb drive that would be great.

Thank you in advance for any help you may provide.

There is a Windows utility application called "Alcohol" which allows ISO format images of CDs stored on a hard disk to be treated as if there was a virtual CD drive in the system.

I received a copy on one the disks distributed with computer magagzines and use for a while..... it certainly worked well enough. I only stopped using it when I found a way to put the particular reference material information I needed from several different CDs onto a DVD, and so could recover the space the ISO images were taking on my hard drive.

There is a 30 day trial version available from ....

http://trial.alcohol-soft.com/en/download_52.php

There may well be other similar tools around!

Cheers,

Bill

Thanks for the tip Bill. I'll take a look at it.

I am using a software called virtual drive. I got it from an internet vendor for $8. It has been working like a charm and so far it has not failed to make CD images. I carry all of medical softwares and games on HD.
It is so convinient, it makes truly ultraportable and saves alot of battery power since everything is run from HD, and access time is much much faster.

I will need to check this one out too.

Ddump for making images and Daemon tools for virtual drives (both CD and DVD). Been using the combo for years. Ddump is totally free and Daemon Tools is free for personal use.

Maybe this isn't the most elegant solution, but it has worked for me. Create a new directory on your hard drive. Copy the entire CD into that directory (I simply used Windows Explorer). Then run the autorun.inf file that's in the new directory on your hard drive (which was copied over when you copied the CD), and it will install from there... all the files that would normally be fetched from the CD will already be on your hard drive. I used this for Microsoft Virtual Globe (I'm really into maps), and the program is MUCH faster with the mapping files on my hard drive as opposed to having them on the CD.

The problem here I face is that some programs/games require that the CD be present for them to run and that is why I am looking for a solution.

mrdeucie wrote:The problem here I face is that some programs/games require that the CD be present for them to run and that is why I am looking for a solution.

There are some freeware apps that allow you to create a directory and map a drive letter to it (sorry, I can't recall the names). If you do that, it will frequently satisfy the programs that require the CD to be present. However, some programs, especially games, are smarter than that, and check to make sure that the "drive" actually is a physical optical drive. There are patches for some of these games that can get you around that, check on cdfreaks.com for them.

Thanks for the tips.