This tip describes how to quickly copy a CD to your hard drive so you can access the files later without having to track down the CD. This is useful for application installation CDs, since you can copy the CD to a network drive and then install the application on any computer on the network.

It makes use of DOS's built-in xcopy command, which is much faster than dragging-and-dropping in the Windows interface.

1. Make sure the drive you want to copy to is mapped. If it isn't, browse to the folder in Windows Explorer, and choose Map Network Drive from the Tools menu.
2. Put the CD in your CD-ROM drive.
3. On the Start menu, select Run..., type cmd and click OK. This will open the DOS command prompt.
4. Enter the following command (assuming D: is you CD-ROM drive and Y:\myprogram is the location you are copying to:

   xcopy d:\ y:\myprogram /E

   All the files on the CD-ROM will be copied to the destination.

5. Once it's complete, exit the DOS prompt by typing exit.
6. To run the setup file from your hard drive, browse to the destination folder in Windows Explorer, locate the setup file, and double-click it.

Files with spaces in their name need to be enclosed in quotes. For example: XCOPY "d:\Public Files\Public Documents" c:\myfiles /E If you don't enclose them in quotes, you will get an error similar to Invalid number of parameters

Reference:

• More info on xcopy