Daemon Tools alternative

...are there any alternatives to Daemon Tools? I only really need the Safedisc emulation on my laptops (where I use it for gaming) but this isn't really needed on my main workstation where I just need to load ISOs here and there for application installation.

Can anyone suggest a user-mode alternative to Daemon Tools that doesn't involve loading dubious materials?

What kind of dubious materials? I've never had any issues with DT.

And I think it's fairly impossible to emulate a CD drive without a kernel mode driver.

Microsofts Virtual CD-ROM

W3bbo wrote:

...are there any alternatives to Daemon Tools? I only really need the Safedisc emulation on my laptops (where I use it for gaming) but this isn't really needed on my main workstation where I just need to load ISOs here and there for application installation.

Can anyone suggest a user-mode alternative to Daemon Tools that doesn't involve loading dubious materials?

depending on your needs the 30day trial of Alch120% should help (not sure about user mode) .... but then you can also load DVD iso's

If you are just looking for an alternative, there a few others... mostly commercial.  I found one other free one is Virtual CloneDrive - and this one works on Vista too for me (I had trouble with DT on Vista).   But, it also installs a driver for its virtual drive.

Ang3lFir3 wrote:

depending on your needs the 30day trial of Alch120% should help (not sure about user mode) .... but then you can also load DVD iso's

Daemon allows virtual DVD drives, too.

If you're looking for a simple utility, Microsoft has an unsupported download that works very well for what you've described.

Download here

katokay wrote:

If you're looking for a simple utility, Microsoft has an unsupported download that works very well for what you've described.

Download here

I used Microsoft's VCD driver before, it doesn't always work.

But nevermind, I've gotten Daemon Tools to work again.

Sven Groot wrote:

I've never had any issues with DT.
.

But the first release of the x64 version was very buggy, and it still is in my experience.

Chadk wrote:

But the first release of the x64 version was very buggy, and it still is in my experience.

I've not had any issues with 4.03 x64.

Sven Groot wrote:



Chadk wrote: But the first release of the x64 version was very buggy, and it still is in my experience.

I've not had any issues with 4.03 x64.

When i ran like a video from it, it crashed my computer with BSOD shortly after. Same goes for everything where there is a constant load from the virtual drive.

blowdart wrote:

W3bbo wrote: katokay wrote:If you're looking for a simple utility, Microsoft has an unsupported download that works very well for what you've described. Download here I used Microsoft's VCD driver before, it doesn't always work. But nevermind, I've gotten Daemon Tools to work again.

Another example of your jinx in order I feel.

Oh, that's nothing.

VS2005 refuses to start because the VC8 assemblies are fubard and Adobe Photoshop CS won't install, rejecting my serial number. Even the CS2 Demo installer won't install, citing " '0' is not a valid serial number". Oh, and Version Cue won't boot up, claiming I haven't yet run Phootshop CS2 yet, even though I loaded Version Cue from within Photoshop CS2.

I think this is all because of the repair re-install.

I'd like to say I hate the CS2 user-interface, it's just ugly. And they're using non-standard widgets in more places I can count now. Or the way they hardcode the text-labels to black so you can't use Photoshop in High-contrast mode.

Great program, made horrible thanks to a terrible UI. Photoshop 5.5 and 7.0 are the best.

Chadk wrote:



Sven Groot wrote:  Chadk wrote: But the first release of the x64 version was very buggy, and it still is in my experience. I've not had any issues with 4.03 x64.

When i ran like a video from it, it crashed my computer with BSOD shortly after. Same goes for everything where there is a constant load from the virtual drive.

I found this out trying to load the 6GB .iso for Orcas Beta 1 Team System; BSOD.

I was using Virtual CloneDrive.

Here is more information on how these utilities are BSOD for Vista; namely when two logins install VCD on the same Vista pc.

article wrote:

Moral - don't install VCD twice!

Can there be a stable and safe version of an .ISO image drive utility on Vista? Free or not?

On this subject, why oh why oh why doesn't Windows natively support mounting an ISO disk image? (right click on ISO, "mount as <drive letter>)

It's still the most useful feature that Windows doesn't have, and it's still bugging me.

I'd be happy if MS decided on their own custom image format if the reasons were that ISO wasn't good enough. It's getting annoying now.

On a good note, from advice from another 9'er, I installed the latest version of DAEMON Tools (april 2007?) and it works fine on Vista -- I opened the 6GB .ISO image just fine, no BSOD.

I have not, however, tried to install DAEMON Tools twice on one Vista PC via two login profiles... hopefully that is no issue for it...

I agree, Massif, it should be natively supported in the OS if that is the only way to insure it works safely and reliably.

I spent my weekend rebuilding my Vista Ultimate...