Troubleshooting

This article explains common issues and helps you resolve problems you may encounter.

Disc Image Editing

Files added to an image file are referenced until you save the image. Do not modify the original files before saving, to avoid inconsistent results.

Update a File

WinISO does not have a built-in editor for modifying the content of files contained in an image file. If you want to edit a file in the image, you can extract it from the image, make some changes, and then add it back to replace the old one.

In WinISO 6, double-clicking a file in the main window will extract the file to a temporary folder and then open it with the corresponding default application on your system. Modifications to the extracted file will not be automatically added back to the original image file.

In WinISO 7, double-clicking a file opens the built-in viewer for the file. The built-in viewer supports viewing plain text and images. For unsupported formats, the raw content is displayed in hexadecimal format.

Reduce Image Size

With the quick save feature enabled, the image file size never shrinks, even if files in the image have been deleted. Use Save As to rebuild a smaller image file that does not contain unused data.

In addition, enabling the file deduplication feature can result in a smaller image file if the image contains many duplicate files.

Unable to Open a File

Some apps, mainly disc mounting tools, open image files in exclusive mode. This behavior prevents the image file from being opened by WinISO or other apps. Such an app may run in the background, making it difficult to notice.

Conversely, an image file opened by WinISO cannot be opened by apps that require exclusive access. Some apps may show vague error messages when they fail to open a file, creating a false impression that the file is damaged.

To avoid such a conflict, close WinISO before using the same image file in other apps.

Making vs Saving

Making an image file in the Make Image dialog box creates an exact copy of the original disc. It is ideal for backing up discs.

Saving will result in a different image file because the file system data is reconstructed on each save. It can be considered a file-level backup if you open a disc and then just save it to an image file without making changes.

Bootable CDs

Usually, the boot image on a bootable CD depends on the contents of the disc. WinISO tries to identify the boot image commonly used in Windows or Linux installer discs and automatically modifies it to avoid boot failure. However, if the boot image cannot be identified, WinISO will leave it unchanged. In this case, modifying the disc image file is very likely to cause boot failure.

WinISO supports extracting and importing boot images, but it does not support authoring or editing boot images.

If you want a ready-to-use bootable CD for system maintenance, you can use Ultimate Boot CD.

Bootable USB Drives

Booting from a USB drive is different from booting from a CD. Rufus is recommended for creating a Windows or Linux USB installation drive from an ISO image file.

Mounting

When mounting or burning an image with unsaved changes, the file system data is reconstructed in memory, and the file data is read from the original image file, or from the original files if they were just added.

No Drive Letter

In rare cases, there is no drive letter assigned to the mounted image. You can manually assign a drive letter to it in Disk Management.

This is usually caused by the automount feature being disabled on your system, which is enabled by default. To enable automount, open an elevated command prompt and run the following diskpart command:

C:\> diskpart
DISKPART> automount enable
Automatic mounting of new volumes enabled.

or the following mountvol command:

C:\> mountvol /e

Disc Burning

Disc burning is supported via IMAPI version 2.0, which is supported natively starting with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Enabling IMAPI 2.0 functionality for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 requires the installation of the KB932716 update package.

Error Codes

The detailed descriptions of the error codes that may be encountered when burning a disc are listed in the IMAPI Reference.

Verification

IMAPI offers three verification levels: None, Quick, and Full. Quick Verification usually takes only a few seconds to perform the heuristic checks. Full Verification requires a relatively long time to read and verify the entire disc.

The behavior of the Verification checkbox in the disc burning dialog was changed in WinISO 6.4.

Limitations

ISO files store only the user data from each sector on an optical disc, which is 2,048 bytes per sector, and there is no concept of a “track” inside an ISO image. CDs with multiple tracks, audio tracks, or video tracks cannot be stored inside a single ISO image.

WinISO is designed for editing ISO files, and it has a similar limitation that multi-track discs are not supported.

Formats such as CUE/BIN, CCD/IMG, and MDS/MDF can be used to store multi-track disc images, including audio CDs, but WinISO does not support image files that contain multiple tracks either, regardless of their format.

Overall, WinISO cannot be used for:

• Backing up Audio CDs or Video CDs;
• Manipulating image files of Audio CDs or Video CDs;
• Converting videos (e.g., converting DVD Video to VCD or MP4, or vice versa);
• Authoring or customizing boot images;
• Creating bootable USB drives.