DAEMON Tools

This week’s featured item is DAEMON Tools, and it’s a little different than most products or services that appear on Best of the Web. DAEMON Tools is probably not for basic or novice computer users — although it is easy enough to use. Most people don’t need a product like DAEMON Tools. But for more experienced or technical computer users, this is a very handy program.

DAEMON Tools fools your computer into thinking that you have additional CD or DVD-ROM drives on your computer and lets you “mount” CD images to mimic putting a CD into the drive. Why is this handy? Because it allows you to use programs or play games without the CD.

After downloading and installing DAEMON Tools (this requires you to restart your computer), you start up the program and you see the little disc and lightning bolt logo in the system tray in the bottom right corner of your screen. It should be in red at first because you haven’t enabled any emulation options. The emulation options help circumvent security features of some games and programs. You then right click on the icon and create a virtual drive and mount a CD image under the “Virtual CD/DVD-ROM” options. You can then enable all the emulation options in that same little menu. If you then go to your My Computer screen, you will see an additional CD/DVD-ROM drive.

In order for you to use programs without the CD’s you have to extract an image of the CD and save it on your hard drive. DAEMON Tools has extensive documentation about what kinds of programs can create good CD images. I have used ISO Recorder for many simple CDs with limited protection; you can also use the Alcohol software for a limited period.

Obviously, DAEMON Tools has the potential for dishonest uses, such as downloading CD images and using the program to install and play a game that you don’t own. But I find it very handy for legitimate use as well. My hard drive is big enough that I can use a couple gigs for CD images, so I never have to carry those CDs around. DAEMON Tools doesn’t have a smooth graphic interface, but it’s fairly simple and works like a charm. If you play video games, you should definitely give DAEMON Tools a try.