I wanted to do some database design work this weekend on my secondary laptop. In order to this, I needed to install SQL Server 2008. My secondary laptop is a Windows 7 machine. I think to myself, this will be pretty easy, download the bits from MSDN, use the Virtual CDRom Utility from Microsoft to mount the iso and away we go. Imagine my surprise to learn that the great little iso mounting utility that worked so well on XP does not work on Windows 7. This started my search for a solution that was light weight and of course free.

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I did quite a bit of searching, but didn't try any of the recommended solutions. I wanted something like the Virtual CDRom Utility, nice and easy to use without a bunch of Explorer extensions, files associations, and the like. I did happen to stumble across an open source file system driver that said it supported Windows 7 [ Search the page for FileDisk ]. I downloaded FileDisk extracted it and then decide to try to use the Virtual CDRom GUI to load this driver.

[NOTE: I ran all the applications as Administrator]

Virtual CDRom Loading Driver

Once I got the driver loaded, I used FileDisk to mount the SQL Server ISO.

Using FileDisk to mount SQL Server

After mounting the ISO, I just changed to the directory and ran setup.

Running Setup from the mounted iso

And after an appropriate waiting period, the installation completed.

SQL Server Setup Complete

Hopefully this will be useful to some folks out there.

Cheers,
Dave