Backed up photos to DVD-they're .wim files- what are these!?

I had to completely restore my laptop due to a virus. I have an HP and was able to back up my photos through HP recovery mode. However my three backup discs have tons of .wim files and I cannot open these. How do I convert them back to files that I can actually open and view? I am a newbie to computers but when it comes to converting .wim files- I have NO idea where to begin. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

Have a look at this tutorial, in particular comment #4.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/15162-wim-file-extract-modify.html

I tried looking through that tutorial... I'm finding it hard to follow. I don't know what imagex is or what is has anything to do with my issue! I've read about "mounting"- but I have no idea how to do that in this case. So you're saying download 7-zip and use it to extract the .wim files? Will this convert them? Is my ultimate goal to convert them to .iso files?

I'm not really an expert on this procedure, but as I understand it you can extract all the files in a Windows image (wim) and copy them to a location of your choice.

When you extract the files the original .wim file is still kept.

As for mounting an image, as far as I'm aware it's the same as intializing a drive and giving it a drive letter (the mount point).

I do hope I've not misled you, but someone else will put us right if I have.

Have a look at this: http://www.ehow.com/how_8795681_change-wim-file.html

Btw: the website is winmount.com and NOT winmoutn.com

Thank you however winmount.com does not look to be the correct website either... Take a look.

Hmm, it gets you to these 2 websites which seem to be what we are looking for:

WinMount Free Download

WinMount - Download