How to open my downloaded ISO files?

Question

Could you explain to me how can one open downloaded ISO files?

Answer 1

While, in this case, you need a tool to open it.
There are a lot of tools to do that. Like WinISO, UltraISO, WinRAR

But if you need an all-in-one solution tool to edit CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc images. I recommend WinISO, a utility tool to help you handle almost all image files.
WinISO can be downloaded here: http://www.winiso.com/user/download/winiso.exe

Answer 2

You either need a virtual CD emulator (e.g. Daemon Tools Lite), which you will use to mount the downloaded .iso image as if you were inserting a physical CD/DVD in your CD/DVD drive.

Alternatively, you could just use a file compression program (e.g. 7-zip) and extract the downloaded image as if it were a zip archive.

Answer 3

Iso images can be opened by WinRAR. WinRAR can be downloaded from: http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

Comments

Well, WinRAR is a 'file compression program' as well, after all. Note that it's not free, however.

Answer 4

Well, I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'open'. While an ISO file can be opened by any number of archival or compression programs, it is not really designed for that. An ISO file is intended to be burned to a DVD or CD, most typically to create a boot disk. To burn an ISO to a disk, you will need a CD or DVD Burner (a drive that both reads and allows for burning), a blank writable disk and some burner software, like Roxio or BurnCDCC.

So if you download an ISO file of a Linux distribution like Ubuntu, you would burn that file to a CD or DVD. Then you could boot from that disk to run a Live version of Linux (meaning run in memory and not installed on your hard drive). Or you could run the installer on that disk to install it to your hard drive. (Warning: doing the Install will destroy your Windows install.) Or a movie might be downloaded as an ISO to burn to disk. Or a bootable password recovery program. So, ISO is just the file format of a CD or DVD. That's all. So look inside it if you want. But burn it if you want to use it as designed.