How to test an ISO image before burning it to a CD/DVD

The other day I was as at by my computer repair shop and one of my customer called and say that he tried to burn a copy of windows xp from and ISO file but its corrupt and it does not work. So this is why I am posting this tip on how to test an ISO image to confirm that its working before burning it to a CD/DVD.
ISO which stands for International Standardization for Organization which is a format for creating images of a CD/DVD, this disk can be a DVD of one of your favorite movie or a piece of software that you love to use on a regular basis and you cant afford to lose it so you probably decide to make an ISO image of that disk so if the original gets damages or scratched you have an image backup of the disk and ready to be burned to a CD/DVD. So you downloaded a nice program or a game that you want but each time you burn it to a CD/DVD it does not work and it keep on wasting your blank CD/DVD .

Mobalive CD is a free tiny but yet powerful program that allows you to test an ISO file and gives you a preview of the image before burning it to a CD/DVD. You can download Mobalive CD here, its only 1.52MB in size. The beauty about this program is that it does not require an installation to take up RAM and Hard Disk space its a single executable file just double click the file(exe).


Next you will get a the "Welcome to mobalive CD" window now all you have to do is click Run live CD.



Next you are going to browse for the ISO file to run I will be running windows XP Black Edition in this case. Once you select the ISO file and click open you will get another pop up window asking you to create a Hard Disk image simply click NO.



Once you click no just wait a moment and it will start loading the image in RAM as I mention before I will be running windows xp black edition ISO file the screen shot below shows the windows xp setup below.



Now from there I can determine that the ISO image is working and I can now burn the image to a CD/DVD. So there you have it I hope you may find this tip useful and if you have any problems you can comment to send me an email so that I can help you troubleshoot the problem. And before I forget if you want to exit the test screen and you don't see the mouse pointer just hit the ESC key.

how to convert mp3 for ring tone for IPhone using Itunes

Hi my name is Steven Forbes also known as techsteve today I am going to share with you on how to convert a mp3 in a format to be played and set as your ringtone on your iphone if you dont have Itunes you can download it for free from the itunes website. Itunes is a popular software which is used by most professionals and normal computer users, it can be use to create and subscribe to podcast purchasing audio files on line and it also supports a wide range of audio formats such as mp3, aac, wav etc you know what I mean. So what I am going to show you is how to take and audio file that is ripped from a an audio CD and convert to another format so that it can be set as your ringtone for your Iphone so lets get started.

After you have download Itunes from the apple website launch the program you should see Itunes v9 installed if you are not sure go to help and select about Itunes.


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Next go to Edit and select Preferences then select import settings.




You will get the import settings dialogue box beside import using select AAC encoder click O.K and click O.K again on Preferences to accept.



Next right click and the song that you want and select Create AAC Version now this will create a duplicate or a copy of the song .
Please Note: When you select Create AAC Verison look at the main Itunes area at the top to see the convertion in progress.


When convertion is completed you will hear a sound which indicate that it is completed, the new AAC version will be located beneath the original just right click on the new converted AAC version and select show in windows Explorer. You will see the new converted song selected.


If you notice the file is now "m4a" format, we need to change it to "M4r" format the "r" by right clicking and select rename and add the letter "r".The "r" stand for ringtone so that when the song is synced to the iphone it can be recognized by the phone, if you dont see the m4a extension got to tools folder options the uncheck hide extension for known file types click O.K.



Now go back the song and you will see the m4a extension as I mentioned previously.Now all you have to do is copy the song which is the one with the m4a extension into Itunes so hold the CTRL key and drag it the song to the desktop because it will be re-imported into Itunes so drag the song the desktop or just copy and paste to the desktop, then change the m4a to m4r you will get a pop up telling are you sure you want to change the format click yes.



Now its time to re-import the song back into Itunes, so just delete the copy of the song that you use to create AAC verison. to verify that it is song you want to delete right click and select get info beside Kind you will AAC format. Now just drag the song into Itunes and if you look in the task pane on the left you will see Ringtones.



Now when you click on ring tones you will see the song in the ringtones section and Violla!!!! thats it you can now sync the song to your iphone as your ring tone thanks to this nice trick using nothing but Itunes and again this technique is free. So I hop you like this post and I hop you find it usefull if you have any problems you can email me if possible and again Thanks for reading stay tuned for more post on a daily basis of advance computer tips and trick on Microsoft word 2007, PowerPoint, Excel, Publisher web design and development Podcasting and much, much more!

Techsteve blog now launched!!!

Techsteve blog now launched thanks to my fellow co-workers who helped me with this blog and for motivating me to start this to help my fellow clients and co-workers to learn and explore more about their computers of advance computer tips and tricks so stay tuned