How to Open a Hospital Scan CD on Windows

On Windows, a scan CD is meant to just work: insert it, a viewer starts, and you see your images. When it doesn’t, the images are still on the disc and easy to open another way.

Step 1: open the CD

Insert the CD. Windows may show an AutoPlay prompt asking what to do with the disc; choose to open the folder, or open File Explorer, click This PC and double-click the CD drive.

You’ll usually see something like this:

• DICOMDIR: the index of what’s on the disc.
• A DICOM folder (or similar) with the images, in files with short names and no extension.
• A viewer program, for example VIEWER.EXE, often with an AUTORUN.INF that tells Windows which program to start.

Some CDs hold the images as a single ZIP file instead of a folder. That’s fine: see step 3.

Step 2: try the CD’s own viewer

If the CD came from your hospital or imaging center, double-click the viewer program. Most run straight from the disc without installing.

If it starts, you’re done. If it shows an error, or nothing happens, don’t worry about it: you don’t need that program.

Step 3: copy the CD, then use any DICOM viewer

1. Copy the whole CD into a folder, for example Documents\Scans 2026-11. Reading from a folder is faster, and you keep a copy.
2. Open our free DICOM viewer in Edge or Chrome.
3. Click Open a folder and choose the folder you copied.

The images open as a series; scroll with the mouse wheel. They’re read in your browser and never uploaded, and Close and delete clears them from the page.

If the CD (or a download) has a ZIP, click Open files and choose the ZIP itself. It’s unzipped in your browser; there’s no need to extract it first.

If you’d rather install an app, Weasis is a free, open-source viewer for Windows (and macOS and Linux).

No CD drive?

Many laptops don’t have one. A USB CD or DVD drive works fine. Or ask for a download: many hospitals and imaging centers offer the same images through their patient portal.

If some images won’t show

A CD can hold several scans. Open each series’ folder on its own if the one you want doesn’t appear. If a viewer says the files use compression it can’t read, see why a DICOM file won’t open.

On a Mac instead? See how to open a hospital scan CD on a Mac.

Key takeaways

• Most scan CDs have a Windows viewer that runs from the disc; try it first.
• If it fails, copy the CD to a folder and open that in any DICOM viewer.
• A ZIP on the CD opens directly in the browser viewer.
• Only run programs from CDs you got from your own hospital or imaging center.
• The radiologist’s report, not the viewer, says what the images mean.

Open the DICOM viewer →

Run a practice or an imaging center? We’re glad to share what we know. When you want a portal that makes all of this easy for your patients, we’ll build it for you, and because we work with AI-assisted development, it costs far less than you might expect. Let’s talk.