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XISO Explorer

Getting Started Using the App Technical Reference Project
Home Usage Guide Architecture Repository
Installation Conversion Methods XDVDFS Technical Docs Building from Source
XISO Explorer Troubleshooting & FAQ Release Notes

The Explorer tab provides a native file browser for Xbox and Xbox 360 images and archives. It reads the XDVDFS filesystem directly from ISO/CISO/CCI and GOD/SVOD images through the XISOSharp 1.9 XisoImage/XisoImageSource facade (StfsSharp-backed for GOD and CCISharp-backed for CCI), the CHD image through CHDSharp (decompressed on demand, with an LRU hunk cache and background read-ahead), the ZAR archive tree through ZArchiveSharp, and single-file XBLA/XBLIG STFS packages through StfsSharp, so you can inspect images without extracting anything. The file picker sits at the top with the explorer list below it, and the right-hand details panel shows title metadata, container details, checksums and image previews.

Opening an Image

  1. Switch to the Explorer tab.
  2. Click Browse... and select a .iso, .xiso, .img, .cso, .cci, .zar, .chd or GOD/SVOD header file, an XBLA/XBLIG STFS package, or Folder... for a GOD/SVOD .data directory or its parent folder.
  3. The root of the image appears in the file list and the details panel fills in.

Supported inputs:

  • .iso, .xiso, .img — standard XISO, Redump and rebuilt sector-0 images; the explorer automatically locates the game partition.
  • .cso — CISO containers (single file or a split .1.cso part set); the game partition is read through the decompressed view.
  • .cci — CCI/CCIM containers (single file or a split part set, including multi-digit parts); the game partition is read through the CCISharp decompressed view.
  • .zar — ZAR archives (ZArchive/zstd); the game tree is read directly from the compressed container. A ZAR tree has no disc geometry, so the title panel reports metadata as unavailable and the preview is disabled.
  • .chd — CHD v5 images; the Xbox filesystem is read from the on-demand decompressed view. Parsing is limited to Xbox DVD images — CD/GD-ROM/hard-disk CHDs are rejected with a clear error.
  • GOD/SVOD — Xbox 360 Games-on-Demand containers (a content-hash header beside a <header>.data directory). The fragment mapping is handled by XisoImageSource/StfsSharp, and the XDVDFS game partition is browsed without extraction.
  • XBLA/XBLIG STFS packages — extensionless single-file packages (a CON /LIVE/PIRS signature) containing a small hash-tree filesystem. StfsSharp reads the file table, title metadata and XDBF artwork; the tree can be browsed, extracted and hashed. STFS packages are not sector images, so conversion to XISO/ZAR/CSO/CHD is not offered — extract the package instead.

Browsing

Action Result
Double-click a folder Enter the folder and list its contents
Up button Move to the parent directory
Path label Shows the current path inside the image

The list displays three columns:

Column Contents
Name File or folder name
Size Size in bytes (human-readable)
Type File or directory

Title Metadata Panel

The details panel on the right shows:

  • Image details — detected format (Iso, Ciso, Cci, God, Chd, Zar), logical/decompressed size, executable path, and kind.
  • Container details — disc layout (RAW, GLOBAL (XGD2), XGD3, …), XGD type, Redump-size match, game-partition offset/length, layer break, security-sector ranges, split parts, compression ratio, CHD version/codecs/SHA-1, ZAR entry counts, and STFS package kind/content type/file counts/block usage.
  • Title metadata — title name, title ID, region, disc number/count, version, publisher, developer, genre and description.

Original-Xbox values come from the XBE certificate. Xbox 360 values come from the XEX XDBF/XSRC resources and, for GOD containers, the XContent header (title name, title ID and disc number/count). If an image has no root default.xbe/default.xex (for example a ZAR tree or a data disc), the panel explains why fields are unavailable instead of failing.

Checksums

Click Compute hashes to stream the whole image and show:

  • CRC-32, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA3-256 of the decompressed image (CHD hashes cover the decompressed image; ZAR whole-file hashes cover the stored archive),
  • the xdvdfs-compatible sorted-path SHA3-256 tree hash, so an ISO, a ZAR and an STFS package holding the same files produce the same value.

Copy places every computed value on the clipboard. Hashing is explicit because it reads the whole image.

XBE Image Preview

Enter the image-internal path of an XBE (defaults to the root executable), choose Logo, Title or Save, and click Load preview:

  • Logo — the Microsoft logo bitmap referenced by the XBE header.
  • Title — the $$XTIMAGE section.
  • Save — the $$XSIMAGE section.

The preview decodes to PNG in-process through XbeAssets; no CLI or external tool is used. XEX executables and ZAR trees do not carry XBE image sections, and a missing or undecodable asset produces a clean status message.

For Xbox 360 titles the panel automatically renders the XDBF thumbnail from the root default.xex when one is present, so 360 images and GOD containers show artwork without a manual step.

Opening Files

Double-click any file to extract it to a temporary location and open it with its default associated application (for example, a .xbe viewer or a text editor). The temporary copy is cleaned up by the application's normal temp-folder housekeeping.

Drag-and-Drop Extraction

Drag one or more files (or whole folders) from the explorer list onto:

  • Your file manager (Windows Explorer, Finder, Nautilus, …),
  • The Desktop, or
  • Any folder.

The selected items are extracted from the ISO to the drop target. This is the quickest way to pull individual files or directories out of an image without extracting the entire disc.

Extract All

Extract all... writes the whole image to a folder chosen by the user. The extraction:

  • sanitizes host-unsafe entry names (separators, device names, alternate data streams),
  • contains per-file failures instead of aborting the rest of the tree,
  • copies independent files with up to four workers,
  • and can Skip existing files of the same size, so an interrupted extraction can be resumed.

ZAR archives use the library's hardened extractor, and CHD images are unpacked through the same on-demand decompressed stream used for browsing.

Split and Join

  • Split... splits the open plain .iso/.xiso image into sector-aligned <name>.1.iso, <name>.2.iso, … parts using the conservative FATX size cap (4 GiB − 16 MiB). Part numbers beyond the first are hidden from the file lists so a split set appears once.
  • Join... reassembles a set starting at its .1.iso part, validates the result, and opens the joined image in the explorer. If the derived .iso name already exists, you are asked before it is replaced.

Notes and Limitations

  • The explorer operates read-only; it never modifies the source image.
  • Very deep directory trees are handled iteratively by XISOSharp (no recursion limits); the ZAR tree walk is bounded at 1024 levels, mirroring ZArchiveSharp's extractor.
  • Images that fail XDVDFS validation (or ZAR archives with a damaged header/index/tree, or CHD images with a damaged container) are rejected with a clear error rather than showing unreliable content.
  • Files that are valid but are not Xbox images — CD/GD-ROM CHD dumps (for example Sega Chihiro arcade games) and packages for other consoles (a PS5 .pkg) — are rejected with a message naming the problem. Since 3.0.3 these expected rejections no longer generate automatic bug reports.
  • Drag-and-drop and open-with-default-application extractions create their temp folder on a drive with enough free space and skip drives that cannot be written (ACL-restricted, BitLocker-locked, or read-only volumes). Since 3.1.2 the free-space check uses the filesystem that actually hosts the system temp folder (on Linux /tmp is often a separate tmpfs), and a full temp filesystem falls back to a writable per-user data folder. Failed or canceled extractions remove their partial output.
  • Since 3.1.2 a drag gesture survives a DataGrid row being rebuilt between the press and the drag threshold, and stale drag state is discarded when the button is released or pointer capture is lost.
  • An image that another program keeps open (sync client, antivirus, another application) can still be browsed: the explorer opens images with read/write sharing, including split .1.cso part sets. If the file is held exclusively, the explorer explains that the image is in use — since 3.1.0 this expected condition no longer generates an automatic bug report.
  • Files with no associated application (Xbox .xex executables, *.pak.xen assets) cannot be launched by the operating system; since 3.1.0 the extracted copy is revealed in your file manager with an explanatory message instead of generating an automatic bug report.
  • Extracting entries from a ZAR archive validates every entry name and refuses unsafe names (.., separators, drive-qualified or device names), so a crafted archive cannot write outside the chosen destination.
  • Conversion, integrity testing, and exploration all use the same libraries, so what you see here reflects exactly what the other views process.