Alex Feinman has developed an amazing freeware tool called ISO Recorder v3 that lets you burn ISO images directly from Windows Explorer. This, combined with the Send To > CD drive feature already built into Windows, will suffice for the basic media burning needs of most IT Pros.

How to use ISO Recorder

1. Recording ISO files

After you install ISO Recorder, no program group is created and there is no application to run. ISO Recorder is a Shell extension, which means it provides additional options in a file right-click menu. To create a CD with ISO Recorder right-click on a file with .iso extension and select "Copy Image to CD"

When you click on this menu item, you see a window like this:

You could notice that the Next button is grayed out. This means that something prevents ISO Recorder from recording a CD immediately. The reason is usually explained under the Recorder box. In this case it says: Media not blank. In this case it's because I happened to have a non-empty rewritable disc in drive. With the Erase button to the resuce we erase the disc content before proceeding:

Notice the Full Erase option. After some use the disc needs to be erased completely or it will produce errors when used to burn an image. Full Erase takes exactly the same amount of time as the recording of the entire disc. Use it sparingly.

Finally, the disc is blank (or you could have used a blank disc in the first place) and we are ready to go:

Clicking Next starts recording process. Depending on the source image location it can start with copying the image to a temporary location. This happens when the image is on a network, compressed or removable volume.

On the next screen you can see the progress of the recording process:

Once recording is completed, click the Finish button to exit ISO Recorder.

2. Creating disc images

To create a disc image insert a CD (DVD) into a drive and right-click on it choosing Create Image from CD option.

Disk images usually are saved with .iso extension, although you can choose any one you like. When ISO Recorder creates an image of a bootable CD, this image can be recorded later on a blank CD and will be still bootable.

ISO Recorder does not support creating images of Audio or Video CDs.