CD / DVD ROM emulation is a good thing especially if you only have one optical ROM drive.  The other benefit of a virtual ROM drive is the ability to run programs on your local hard drive which means less changing in and out discs and the programs actually seem to run faster. For CD / DVD drive emulation I am a big fan of Daemon Tools.  You can create up to 4 virtual ROM drives to run various applications, music, or movies.  There are also several 3rd Party addons for Daemon Tools as well.  I have not tried any of the third party applications but you might find some of them useful.  If you have an experience with them please let us know! When first installing Daemon Tools Lite make sure you avoid installing any type of Crap-Ware that will change your homepage or give you some sort of useless toolbar.  After making sure to uncheck the appropriate boxes above you need to make sure and uncheck the next box so your homepage doesn't get hijacked.

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After installation (which may require a reboot) you will have the Daemon Tool icon on your task bar.  We can change several options by right clicking to get a series of menus. Under Emulation I choose All options ON. Go to Mount image to load an ISO image you want to run. 

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After setting up how many virtual drives you want (maximum is 4) and loading an ISO image you will see the drive with the program loaded in "My Computer".  In this example the virtual drive is G: and I loaded a Star Trek game.

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Download Daemon Tools 4.12.3:

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