Marie Roch provided the following

Mounting ISO 9660 CD/DVD Images without burning CDs or DVDs

Microsoft academic alliance distributes most of their software as CD or DVD images conforming to the International Standards Organization 9660 (see Eur.Computer Manufacturers standard ECMA-119 for a complete description).

While one may burn a copy of an ISO image to CD or DVD, an alternative is to mount the image using optical drive emulator. There are a number of software tools that will permit you to do this. Examples of these include:

* Microsoft provides a utility for Windows XP with minimal documentation.

* Slysoft distributes a free utility called Virtual CloneDrive which works with Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP/XP64/VISTA/VISTA64.

* Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. has Daemon Tools which is free for private use.

Many other commercial tools such as Nero also have virtual drive managers. Regardless of your choice, once the virtual drive is installed, the software will let you select a file to mount. You will need to read the manual/help pages from each vendor for specifics. All of the software utilities mentioned above support the ISO 9660 standard (.iso files) and will let you select an ISO image provided by MSDN AA. Once the drive is mounted, you may need to open the drive and start the installation manually if the virtual drive does not do so automatically. For most Microsoft products, you can double click on Setup.exe in the root directory (folder) of the drive.