Using a CD on a current Mac laptop

grimsargh

Active Member
Merry Christmas everyone, my daughter has a need to run a disc on her Mac laptop. She gets diagnostic CD's from her patients that she cannot open. These CD's contain all the relevant programs to open and let her read the information they contain but not being Mac compatible she needs to solve the problem rather than having to buy a PC in order to run these infrequent CD's. She tried them on a USB Superdrive and was unsuccessful. Does she have any other options? Thanks.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Assuming she can open other CD's (music perhaps) on her USB Superdrive (proving the drive is working correctly), this would suggest the issue is with the format in which the diagnostic information is presented. Perhaps there is an application she could install that would read such a format, but without knowing more about what format is used, it is hard to say for sure. Another option may be to run Parallels and then have Windows available to run on her Mac, if these CD's truly do require a Windows compatible application to open them.
 

grimsargh

Active Member
She says that the program that runs the diagnostic information is on the CD as well as the information, it does spin when she puts it in the USB Superdrive but it doesn't open the documents. I will suggest she try to run a music CD, although she may have already tried that. She doesn't want to install Parallels because that is what I suggested already so I then suggested she just buy a PC and just keep it for that purpose. Seems that might be the easiest answer. Thanks Dave.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
The program that runs the diagnostic information may well be on the CD but does she know for sure that these programs are meant to run on a Mac? They may well be Windows .exe files.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
Seems obvious to me that the CD contains programs and formats designed for Windows, not Mac, and therefore you'll need some sort of Windows install (or a cheap PC). That said, if the information she needs is in the form of DICOM images, there is a free version of a DICOM file reader for Mac called OsiriX Lite, which she can obtain here: https://www.osirix-viewer.com
 

grimsargh

Active Member
The program that runs the diagnostic information may well be on the CD but does she know for sure that these programs are meant to run on a Mac? They may well be Windows .exe files.
That's what I think is the problem and won't work under the present circumstances.
 

grimsargh

Active Member
Seems obvious to me that the CD contains programs and formats designed for Windows, not Mac, and therefore you'll need some sort of Windows install (or a cheap PC). That said, if the information she needs is in the form of DICOM images, there is a free version of a DICOM file reader for Mac called OsiriX Lite, which she can obtain here: https://www.osirix-viewer.com
Thank you, Charles, for the suggestion of the DICOM file reader, I shall pass that on to her to see if that solves her problem.
 
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