Quote Originally Posted by OErjan
i have had that problem when helping friends download Knoppix, botn to XP and WIN2K.
as far as i know it is WINRAR and/or one other utility (canot remember name), that "kidnaps" th *.ISO files and tries to unzipthem, anoyinbg as &(/&().
The hijacking is an anoying feature of Windows, happens to a lot more than ISO files. But that's far different from saying a file of one type (in this case iso) is a different type (zip).

This hijacking in no way prevents you from burning an iso. At least as long as you understand what type of file that you really have.

As already stated, if you are burning from an iso, open Nero, and from the file menu select "Burn image ...". DO NOT just copy the ISO to the CD with the "CD ROM (ISO)" option that shows up on the splash menu when Nero starts. This works no matter what application the ISO extension is associated with (I have the ISO extension associated with an application called ISO Buster myself, so clearly it's not a problem). By the way, ISO Buster did not hijack this extension, I made the change myself. See below.

In Windows you can change the association yourself when some anti-social program hijacks an extension (this happens a lot with various graphic and video formats). Just find a file with the extension you want to change, hold the shift key down, and right click on the file. A menu should open that includes open with ... in addition to or instead of open. Select open with ... and a window should open that lets you select what program you want to open the file with. There is also a small check box for always using that application, check it to change the default.

I've seen a few graphic programs that continue to hijack some extensions each time they are run. The fix here is easy too. Stop running any such software.

Recap: Any of 3 approaches to do this: Open Nero and use the burn image option, Shift right-click on the iso file and select Nero from the list of applications, or Shift right-click on the iso file and select Nero from the list of applications and check the box so that you don't have to do this again. That concludes this lesson in using Windows.