Downloaded CDs and DVDs come in all sorts of crazy formats. ISO (with the file extension .iso) is perhaps the most common and well supported by tools such as Winrar and Iso Recorder amongst hundreds of others.

Many downloads come in the form of less universally supported formats such as .bin (with a corresponding .cue file). There are indeed plenty of programs to use these including Daemon Tools, CDRWin and Alcohol 120% but these often either cost extra money or require you to burn the image to a physical CD before using.

Instead, the Poorhouse favours a swift conversion to ISO using programs such as bin2iso. There seem to be any number of versions of this around, but the one at codeproject.com works well in Windows XP, and if you are that interested comes with technical details and source code. If you're not, just run the file "Bin2Iso.exe" in the Release folder of the download. This program will create an .iso file from your .bin original which can then then simply open in any iso-enabled program.