Regarding searching into .iso (and other type of archives): jaclaz might not have tried Total Commander with a truckload of Packer (and Lister, when needed) plug-ins.

Thanks for the tip, Drugwash. Total7zip 0.8.5.2 http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/Total7zip.html seems interesting.

Please be very careful with those plug-ins - it's been a long time since I navigated the totalcmd.net repositiory and it seems many/most of the plug-ins are now Unicode-only, while their older 9x-compatible versions are nowhere to be found. I do have a few of the older versions scattered on CD/DVDs and who-knows-where else, if you need them.

Here's the list of all the plug-ins I have installed currently; a few of them are new, haven't yet checked whether they work correctly, any bugs, etc but most of them have been there for years. I think Multiarc might be one of the most useful, together with Install Explorer and the other packers. For 7-zip, an old version by Adam Streleczki (0.5.5 here) is the only one I got to work and have had it installed - all the others at the repository are Unicode-only and will throw an error upon instalation.

PACKER (WCX):
iso
TreeCopyPlus
7zip
HA
Multiarc
bzip2dll
MHTep
DiskDirExtended
ResExtract
wipe
InstExpl
IShield

FILE SYSTEM (WFX):
httpbrowser	(HTTP browser)
ex2fs		(Linux drives)
PROCFS		(Task manager)
MirandaFS	(Miranda database explorer)
Back2Life		(Erased files)
Registry		(Registry)
wmdmplug	(Media audio)

LISTER (WLX):
ICL View
TTFViewer
pdfview
FlashView
IEWebLister
listdoc
anytag
DSView ?
Imagine
fileinfo
Ansi

CONTENT (WDX):
super_wdx
AudioInfo
anytag
Shortcut
RarInfo
FileDesc

Please be very careful with those plug-ins ...it seems many/most of the plug-ins are now Unicode-only, while their older 9x-compatible versions are nowhere to be found... For 7-zip, an old version by Adam Streleczki (0.5.5 here) is the only one I got to work and have had it installed - all the others at the repository are Unicode-only and will throw an error upon instalation.

Thanks for the warning about incompatibility with Win9x. The readme.rtf of Total7zip v0.8.5.2 states "Full support for Unicode and other innovations of the latest Total Commander."

Around 2007/2008 I downloaded about 70 Total Commander plug-ins, which are now in my archive, including wcx_7zip-0.5.5.zip, in case a need arises.

On a first check, the wayback archive contains descriptions back to v0.7.0.7, but not the actual zip files http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/Total7zip.html

A lot of old versions could be found with the google search string

"index of /" wcx 7zip

but I will have to check out first whether Total7zip is what solves the problem.

I do have a few of the older versions scattered on CD/DVDs and who-knows-where else

This exactly shows the usefulness of such a search tool, if you archive your CDs centrally as .isos

Actually I've had a catalogue application for years and have stored each CD/DVD's contents through it, so it shouldn't be a problem to retrieve the exact location of certain files. It can catalog/retrieve files in common archive types but I'm not sure if it can open .iso, .bin/.cue, .mdf, .nrg or other image formats. I may build my own catalogue application at some point if I find the proper information and the spare time required.

For the iso images, you may only need the ISO plug-in which can read - according to its readme - iso, bin, nrg, img, mdf file types. The latest (at the time of typing this) 1.7.7 beta4 seems to work in 9x but I haven't tested it extensively - just checked if it's loaded and opens an iso, which it did.