Can't Extract Iso File.

[Lyna]

I just came across your problem as mine and now I've figured out that problem.

A simple solution, you can reinstall your winrar with the lastest version if you have and while installing you need to choose .iso file so that the winrar can recognize the .iso file extention. After that, you can extract the .iso file as any zipped file.

Hope it could be useful for the others.

Heartily/Hardily sophistry aside -i'm quite sure the confusion is at least half-rooted in "hardy" which is to be robust or sturdy, steadfast etc and thus Hardily Agree is perfectly cromulent *chuckles* as it would mean literally to agree robustly. However "agree whole-hardily" is certainly a syntax error!

Since i'm eagerly awaiting any kindly bright spark to reply to my own personal plight and pressuming i'm not presenting any forum faux pas i'm unaware of i might as well add my threpenny bit.

One thing stands out to me in this thread as conflicting and very confusing* if you are a newbie to disc images and the burning thereof (which we ALL were once). I'm not at all interested in getting into a free vs. registered software argument- i use a plethora of apps for basically doing the same job since i have huge drive space and an almost fanatical lust for new apps. None of the applications which have been mentioned thus far in this thread, in my opinion, are any better or worse at doing the job required. Some of them are more aesthetically pleasing if cosmetics is your thing. If i had to choose one to warn you away from it would be Roxio, i find it to be too intrusive and once it gets it's roots planted in your hardware it's an absolute headache to remove. That is only my opinion though and my mate who got Roxio software bundled with his Packard Bell *chuckle* swears by it so you see it's very much "horses for courses". Find one you like or get them all like me heh.

*The confusing bit- ISO/RAR. I'm going to be frank here and i might get flamed but i feel this is important: if you do not know how a .rar is different from an .iso you really need to make sure your unrar app (winrar etc) is NOT associated with .iso files. If it is the case and your unrar app is associated with .iso it is going to cause you untold confusion (especially when you consider that some .iso files come compressed in .rar format). There's no easy way to explain this to a layman but i shall endeavour.

Let us say, for instance, your friend has transferred you by whatever means a cd compilation of family photo's, there are many many ways to do this but let's assume friend has been acquainting himself with some slideshow maker or somesuch and has decided to send you this cd worth of family photos in ISO format ie. you simply open your CD/DVD Image Burning Software and (mostly these days) just drag and drop the file friend sent you into the UI (or in a old skool stylie) do somesuch click file > open > browse to friend's file and select. After some pretty basic yes/no decisions your dvd/cd burner should start to chug away as it does as it was created to do.
You don't really need to concern yourself with how this actually works, it's like olives and pimentos (they taste good so who cares how the pimento gets in there?). Once the burning process is finished you can pop your cd/dvd of family photos into a compatible dvd player and watch the slideshow exactly how your friend conceived it.

Now, let's say that this .iso of family photos is back at square 1 and has not yet been sent as you and your friend are discussing the best way to transfer the file for you since (for the sake of example) you have dialup 3G wireless or some other form of 'not-so-stable' internet. Consider: if this is a cd .iso it could be upto 700MB and if it is a dvd .iso it could be anything upto 4700MB! One thing you definately do not want is for the transfer to fail ¾ of the way through, so how do we safeguard against this? There is one popular way which i still use to get files to my old man who hasn't yet figured out broadband and only uses msn messenger to transfer files (a prime example of potentially a wasted afternoon's file transfering, never good).
Let's take the story back to this .iso file we've got- it's 450MB big and at 5.1kps would take a mighty long time to transfer. Spotlight on Winrar (and a whole plethora of other file compression apps such as 7zip and WinACE, some free some not... all usable). We will keep it simple and just focus on WinRar- You can use the .rar file compression to make a "multi-volume .rar" which is basically your 450MB .iso compressed and then split into smaller files. These files can be downloaded 1 by 1 and when all stored in the same place will open to reveal your "ready to burn" .iso file.
Why do this? Simple really. If you have split a 450MB .iso into 30x15MB .rar files and are sending them 1 at a time, if one fails you've only lost 15MB of data and the lost part is all you need to resend. Genius.

So, since there's absolutely nowt wrong with being a newbie, how do we tell the difference?
Again- easy when you know how:

1. Check your file associations- Open up WinRar, click Options > Settings > Integration Tab > make certain that the box for ISO is NOT ticked (if it is ticked untick it of course), hit OK and exit, happy in the knowledge that WinRar will never again interfere with your disc images!!

2. Now you've unassociated your .iso from WinRar browse to it's location, right click on it and select Open With... (this will bring up a menu of applications which may or may not be useful for .iso burning) all that's required here is some common sense- you know the name of your image burning software so click on that (be it nero or imgburn etc etc) and put a tick in the box which says "Always use this program to open files of this type". If (as will happen rarely) your burning software is NOT listed you will need to use browse and locate the .exe file which will most likely be in Program Files under either it's name or it's developer; usually however this will not be necessary as the appropriate program will appear listed; don't forget to tick the box "always use this program...". Congratulations, you just succesfully associated a filetype, nice work. Your reward is simple- next time you have an .iso to burn all you need to do is double click it and your image burning software will spring to life and do your bidding!

3. Hang on Goo™.....there's more than 1 file 'ere- Yep, that's a multi-volume .rar and it should remain associated with WinRar. The files will be labelled something like this (usually in order) family_photo_slideshow.rar, family_photo_slideshow.r00, family_photo_slideshow.r01, family_photo_slideshow.r02, etc etc. All you need to do with this is right-click the first file ie. family_photo_slideshow.rar and ask for it to be extracted. WinRar will compile the volumes and uncompress the .iso which will appear in the folder with the .rar files with (usually) the same name but since you were groovy and learned how to properly associate the filetype it will now look like this family_photo_slideshow.iso which you now double click and watch your image burner do it's stuff.

4. Help! I've uncompressed the .rar file and there's nothing but a .txt file??? Most likely explaination- you've just uncompressed an .iso which has sadly rendered it useless. Delete everything except the original file and check steps 1 + 2 again. It's highly likely you've missed something.

Everyone is different and that is what makes us all the more the same so don't take this personally please, if it suits you to do this then i'm not going to debase you for having a preference BUT in my experience using unzips and unrars on .iso files is bad practice- i can't think of a single reason why one would choose to unzip/unrar an .iso file. In many situations i can think of you would be left with an installer which won't work, surely?

Well, the problem is that WinRAR working on ISO data disk images, which
contains CD File System inside. If the disk was formatted for UDF file
system, it is not compatible with CDFS, so for compatibility purposes this
disk has a stub, which is in CDFS, and contains a single *.txt only with
explanation of the disk format.
You will need other imaging software, which works with *UDF* specifically,
or some UDF driver software, which can use UDF ISO disk images as well as
physical ones.

You can't boot Vista from a flash drive.

[Bilal3987]

At last a sensible answer. After reading all the rubbish about correctness I nearly got fed up with reading the thread. Going off topic is not a good thing for newbies. I can see the confusion in the question, CAN'T EXTRACT ISO FILE but I assume he had the same problems as many others. He had the ISO file but he could not burn it as it only shows the text file mentioned.
Getting the right software I assume from the comment above, will cure the problem.
And if I have made an error in my grammar/spelling don't make comments that are not in context with the thread, they are not needed.

What should i do if i have to extract the ISO Vista File into USB flash drive and make it bootable?

I haven't looked at the BIOS yet on my new machine, but I don't imagine
they've added flash drives to the boot options. Normally the options are
the internal hard drive(s), CD/DVD drive(s), and floppy drive if it still
has one. I'm not sure if it'll let you add anything which is connected
externally though it would be nice if it at least recognizes external drives
using the eSata connector.

You can extract an ISO file anywhere. It is just another form of archive.
I'd use 7-Zip.
Normally you don't extract an ISO file, CD burning software takes care of
that for you.

If it's a new machine then the odds are it WILL boot from a flash drive -
the point is (I think) that Windows won't allow booting from a flash
drive....

Interesting. I'll have to check that out. I don't even know offhand how to
get to the BIOS on my new machine. Fast startups have hidden the screen
that used to splash up saying press <key> to get to BIOS and different
systems have different buttons to push to get there (and the time window for
being able to press that key is typically very short).
Last I looked at a BIOS it only showed floppy/CD/HD. I wonder if the flash
drive has to be plugged in and recognized or if it would show USB port as a
boot option and attempt to detect anything connected to it whenever it
boots.

Bootable disks normally give you some kind of command prompt for executing
commands which won't work while the OS is running or for assisting in
recovering a broken OS. I can't imagine why you'd want to run Windows from
the (USB) flash drive. At best that would be painfully slow. If you want
to run the OS from an external device, the sata port might make more sense.
I hope that would work since I am planning to get an external hard drive as
soon as I get the cash, to make a copy of my internal hard drive, and I'd
want to be able to boot to it if my internal hard drive fails to boot.

I'm guessing that a drive on the eSATA port looks like an internal drive to
the computer, hence to Windows.

This computer doesn't have an eSATA port, so I'll never know.

[thefiler82]

I lol'd at the answers here that all fail. It has nothing to do with winrar or iso files or nero of whatever the fukk program you are u using.

"This disc contains a "UDF" file system and requires an operating system that supports the ISO-13346 "UDF" file system specification."

Means that the iso file is corrupted. The End. Re-download.

[pandeyan1998]

Is it the same for a Windows 7 Utimate .iso file ???

[Namchan]

Originally Posted by pandeyan1998

Is it the same for a Windows 7 Utimate .iso file ???

yes offcourse... The way to extract ISO files is same, no matter it is for XP or Windows 7. Just make sure you have updated and working WinRar.