This page contains help with how to download software from the Software Center. You must order a product before you can download anything. And before you can order the first time, you must first have an active account on the Software Center. (See instructions for how to activate your account and order software).

(NOTE: Images and software titles that appear in the Software Center will change depending on what classes are currently scheduled). You can begin to download an item any time after it has been checked out from your shopping cart. You can see a Software List (shown below) of all completed software orders, both download and mail order purchase, by clicking on the My Software button on the left side of any page.

Items that were ordered but are not yet checked out of your shopping cart will not appear in your Software List. This example demonstrates downloading the first of two Visual Studio 2005 CD image files. (Visual Studio 2005 CD1 and CD2 were recently replaced with Visual Studio 2008 on 1 DVD disk.) You can click on an Invoice No. to see Order Details or click the Download link, which takes you to the My Software page.

From the My Software page you can check the delivery status or find the software serial number, if one was issued. You also can view order details or begin downloading by clicking the Download button on that page.

This initial downloader program, also called a License Key executable, will be used later to initiate the actual software product download in the form of an ISO Image file that can be used to create an exact duplicate of an original CD. Also, this page is the only place you will find a personal activation key, listed next to Serial Number. When required, you will find a 25-digit key that you must enter during the setup program when installing software. Some products, as in this example, do not issue a key but instead will have it already built into the setup program.

However you initiate the download process, eventually you should see an initial File Download Security Warning (below).

You can choose Run or Save. It will be more convenient later if you choose to save this first (small) file in case you need to initiate the download process again, which could be necessary if your download is interrupted or you need to start the download over again because of a corrupted download file. It also can help to locate the bigger file you will download and use to create your CD. If you choose Run and something goes wrong later then you will need to come back to the Software Center and try the Download link again.

This example shows what to expect when you choose the Save option, which brings up a familiar Save As dialog (below).

Accept the default or choose another Save in location, and then click the Save button. Remember where you save this file. This file being saved is only a small program and must be executed to download the actual software product, which will take one or more hours depending on the size of software and your modem speed. Also, the delivery status on the My Software page for this title will not show that the Download is complete until you have actually downloaded the software product using this executable program.

When the download completes, you can click the Open Folder button as shown here to find it more quickly. .

You also can close the Download window and then go search for the folder and file yourself.

Notice the file name and file size of this small program - this is not the real software yet, but you need it in order to authenticate, download, and unpack that software. You will use this file to start that process now, and you can run it again to resume an interrupted download. Also, after the ISO Image file has been downloaded, this program can help quickly find that image file later.

The downloader (License Key) program should have some type of executable icon to the left of the file name, either a small window or a blue circle with a lightening bolt as shown. And although the file Size may be slightly different, the Type should indicate Application. When downloading other software products, or when downloading 2 or more CD image (ISO) files for the same product, you might have several separate downloader programs. Each file typically, though not always, has a different file name. You will see later in this example that with Visual Studio 2005, the second CD download uses the same file name shown here for that License Key executable. In that case, it might be a good idea to rename the files to identify them as separate CDs.

To run this License Key executable program and begin the secure download of the Visual Studio CD1 ISO Image file, you can either double-click the file icon, or right-click the file and choose Open. If a Security Warning appears, choose Run. You should see the License Authentication and Software Installation window below.

Running this small download program attempts to complete 4 steps including Authorization, Downloading, Unpacking, and Launch Install. If you want to choose a folder other than the default, you will need to type in the complete path in the text field provided. This example demonstrates using the default folder called C:\Temp.

You then need to click the Continue button to begin the next step: Downloading. (Note: If you lose your Internet connection sometime during this process then you can simply run the License Key program again to open this window. (The same button will read Resume instead of Continue.)

The Downloading step takes the longest, anywhere from 30-45 minutes to a few hours, depending on your Internet connection speed, server traffic, and file size.

The next step, Unpacking, proceeds to unpack the download file into the specified folder (C:\Temp in this example), which will now contain the ISO image file that must be used to create a CD (image) of the original software setup CD.

Unpacking begins with a Checking File process that should only take a few seconds before the actual unpacking begins. The unpacking process might run another few minutes at most.

The last step, Launch Install, indicates the Authorization, Downloading, and Unpacking processes are now complete.

Clicking Launch Install will open the directory where you can find the downloaded ISO Image file that then must be used to create a CD from the contents of that image file.

Notice the folder that was opened is C:\Temp, the one specified in the first step.

Your system may or may not recognize the .iso file extension, depending on what type of CD software you have installed. If you do not have CD software that recognizes this type of file then the Type will probably just indicate ISO file. In this example, you can see that the file Type is recognized by a program called Easy CD Creator, a Roxio product, which also has a unique icon just before the file name. You can try to right-click that file to see if you have a program that might recognize this type of file and record it to a CD.

Important: You cannot just copy (or write) this file to a CD and install the software. You must use some other program that can burn the bit pattern from an ISO file to a blank CD disc, creating an exact duplicate of the folder structure and files that were on the original CD used to create this image file.

If you need to download individual ISO image files for software products requiring more than one CD, as in this example, then the process is basically the same except each individual download will unpack as an ISO image file with something like cd1 and cd2 in the file name to distinguish one from the other as shown below.

In this case, each file must be used to create separate CD discs, one for each file. Once all files in that software set have been used to create CD discs, you then use that set of discs to install the software on your computer. Some examples of software products that require more than one CD are Visual Studio 2005, MSDN Library for Visual Studio, and SQL Server 2005. If you need to find a program capable of creating a CD from an ISO Image file, then review the information on the ISO Images page under About Software Center. If you suspect there might be a problem with the ISO file that you downloaded then review the information on the Verifying an ISO Download File page, also under About Software Center.