An ISO file is a complete image of the directory structure and all files on a CD or DVD. It's called "ISO" because it's an image of an "ISO 9660" file system. For details on this format, see this Wikipedia article.

An ISO file is created by making a "snapshot" of the contents of a CD or DVD. An ISO file is thus the complete contents of a DVD or CD. This image can be "burned" or recorded to a CD or DVD using special software, which will recreate the contents of the ISO file on the blank CD/DVD.

In order to burn an ISO image to a blank CD/DVD you will need:

1. A CD-RW or DVD-RW drive on your PC (A drive that can record, not only read CDs/DVDs)
2. Software that will allow you to burn the ISO image to a CD/DVD.
   There are numerous software packages out there that have the ability to do this. The most popular ones are : Nero, Easy-CD Creator, Alcohol.
   See this Wikipedia article to get a list of ISO image software.

EXAMPLE

This example will show you how to burn a Pocket OPS image using Nero, a popular CD/DVD authoring software package. This is just an example, you can burn ANY image using nero.

1. Start Nero and cancel any initial wizard/dialog windows so you have a blank screen:



2. From the main screen, click Recorder -> Burn Image:

  

This dialog lets you select the ISO file you want to burn to the CD

3. Once you've selected the file, click "Open" and you should see the "Burn" dialog:



4. Click the "Burn" button to burn the image to the CD, recreating the directory structure. Now when you insert the CD in the drive, the CD will look like this:

 

In this example, F: is the CD drive with the just-burned CD in it.