A Newbie's Guide to Unpacking und Burning Images that are compressed with 7-ZIP & ECM
 

This guide is kinda out of place here, since it doesn't help with any problem regarding a game offered at Abandonia, but there's probably no better place for it in the forum. It originated from here. As you can tell, the guide is very unfinished. Many screenshots are in German, but I couldn't help that. I would need the help of someone with an English version of Windows to finish the guide. Anyway, here it goes!

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A Newbie's Guide to Unpacking und Burning Images that are compressed with 7-ZIP & ECM

Hi! My name's Ozzie and I'm here to tell you everything you need to know about unpacking this tightly compressed image. I hope this whole process will be easy to follow for you! But if you still have burning questions at the end of this guide, ask away in the forum.

This archive you just downloaded is compressed with 7-ZIP, the best format you could find for compression. You can use the following unarchivers to unpack a 7ZIP archive: WinRAR, PowerArchiver, TugZIP, PeaZIP, jZIP, IZArc, ZIPGenius, and some more.
If you don't have any unarchiver installed or lack the faintest clue what an unarchiver is, then I recommend you to install WinRAR. You can download it here.
At the top of the page you'll find download links for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. If you have no idea how these bits matter to you, then download the 32-bit version. But if you're still curious what the best choice for your system may be, then take a look here to find out.

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If you want a localized version of WinRAR you have to look further down the page. Now, after you downloaded WinRAR, look for its location and start the setup file!
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...nrar_setup.jpg

This is what the setup looks like. You can change the path if you want to, but the standard path is just fine. Then click on continue.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...nrar_setup.jpg

On this screen you're able to customize the system integration. You can specify which file types you want to associate with WinRAR, if you want to integrate WinRAR in the system shell, and more. Since WinRAR has the tendency to trash the context menu, I tend to deactivate the shell integration. But choose like you want, or don't choose at all. Just keep the association with 7ZIP, since you'll need it!
You could use WinRAR to navigate to the 7ZIP archive, but a much easier option is to use the Explorer. So, go to the location where you saved your 7ZIP archive and doubleclick on it! WinRAR opens, since it is the standard program for this file type now.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...6_-_winrar.jpg

You see a row of buttons on the upper side of the window. Click on the one with „Extract“ on it.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...ar_options.jpg

At the top you can enter the path where you want to save the file [1]. Alternatively, you can navigate through the folder hierarchy [2] and select the location where you want to save the extracted files, which you should remember, of course. If you're happy with your choice, click on „OK“ [3].

http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...-_explorer.jpg
These or similar are your extracted files. Of interest is unecm.bat [1]. Doubleclick to execute it.
A commandline window opens and decodes the file with the extension .ecm to another one without such an extension, which you will find in the directory after the window closes itself. Now you can savely delete the files unecm.bat, unecm.exe and the file with the extension .ecm [x].

Now that you uncompressed the image, it's the question what you want to do with it. I see two possibilities:

1. You want to burn it on a CD
2. You want to mount it in a virtual drive, so that you don't have to run for the CD every time you play the game. You may ask: What is a virtual drive? Basically, it simulates a real one, but uses an image file as the CD.

Let's look at the possibilities one by one:

1. To burn the image to a CD you need a burning program. I recommend ImgBurn since it's the most user-friendly tool I know for the job. This page offers a bunch of mirrors to download it from.
Start the setup and click „Next“. You'll encounter the following window:
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...burn_setup.jpg

You should keep the check for „Desktop Icon“ so you can easily find the application later on. After clicking „Next“ again you can customize the installation path, if you want. Then the installation begins. At the end you're asked if you want to run ImgBurn. Let's just do that!
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/..._-_imgburn.jpg

You're presented with six options. Choose the first, „Write image file to disc“.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/..._-_imgburn.jpg

This screen requests only two things from you: to select the image and to insert a CD-R in your drive! The file you need to select either has a .img or .bin extension. With a click on the folder with the magniying glass [1] you can browse for the image, or you can drag & drop the image file on the window. After you did everything right, you can click on the big button at the bottom [2].

2. To create a virtual drive, you should use Virtual Clone Drive. Download the setup here and execute it. Agree with the license. Then you'll see this screen:
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...rive_setup.jpg

Check all the unchecked boxes to associate all CD image file types with Virtual Clone Drives. It should look like this:
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...rive_setup.jpg

Continue with the setup, agree with the chosen path or choose your own, and click on „Install“ to start the installation. A message may pop up and ask you if want to install the device software.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...ws_message.jpg

Confirm this with a click on „Install“. You can click on „Close“ after Virtual Clone Drive finished its installation.

Virtual CloneDrive will start with Windows and always be available in the System Tray:
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...drive_tray.jpg

Now you can either mount the image through the explorer or through Virtual CloneDrive. I'll explain the latter option.
Click with the right mouse button on the tray icon. Hover with the mouse cursor over „Drive X:“ (where X: can be any drive) and choose „Load image file...“.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...ay_auswahl.jpg

Now you can navigate through the folder hierarchy and select the image file to mount it (for example: Pyramid.ccd).
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...hoose_file.jpg

After this the following window may pop up and ask you what you want to do with it.
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Kluf/...a_wanna_do.jpg
Otherwise, you can, like always, access the virtual CD through the Explorer.

That's all! Have fun! :-)

Nice howto Ozzie. :)

Just to be complete, you also can get yourself the excellent freeware and fully featured 7Zip soft in stead of WinRAR.
http://www.7-zip.org/
Can handle almost any archive (included RAR-ZIP-whatever....) you throw on it.
Easy and self explaining user interface.

Yeah, personally, I also prefer 7-ZIP over WinRAR. Maybe I should have used it as the example application in the guide.
But I thought that more people may be familiar with WinRAR anyway!