When I mount the image onto the virtual drive, it tells me to insert a disk. I'm not trying to burn anything, I just want to mount and open...
I'm not sure which software you are using to mount an ISO. I currently use "PowerISO". With most programs, the concept is the same. There are really 2 steps to view the contents of an ISO image file. The 1st step is to Mount the "Drive", then the second step is to Mount the "ISO/Image" to that particular drive. It sounds like you are not properly mounting the Image to the drive. In Windows think of it this way. When you Mount the Drive, it creates a virtual CD/DVDrom drive when you go to the "My Computer" view. So you should see a new CDrom drive appear in the Windows Explorer after you have mounted the "drive". After step 1, it would be like having a CDrom drive installed on your system, but you have not yet inserted a CDrom/DVDrom into the drive yet. So you must now mount a CD or DVD image file into it, which would be like inserting a CDrom drive into the drive. So you need to "Mount the Image file" to that particular virtual drive. Once you mount the Image file, you can now double click on the virtual CDrom drive and view the contents of the ISO/image file the same as you would do if it was an actual CDrom or DVDrom. Hopefully, that was helpful and I wasn't just telling you things you already know.
No, for some reason it tells me to insert a disc even when Ive already mounted the image. When Im in the PowerISO app, I click file, open cdrom drive K:, then it asks if i want to import the file at which it then shows me the individual pieces of the .iso So the image is there I just don't know why it wants a disc. I tried a different .iso and same problem so i know the problem is on me but there isnt really much I can play around with.