rip CD to .iso / create .iso image

I am currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.4 on an aluminum unibody Macbook Pro and I am trying to rip a copy of a Windows CD to an .iso image so I can mount it in a VM. I have tried the Snow Leopard disk utility, ripping from the command line using "dd", and a number of third-party .iso utilities and all of them fail. Any ideas?

Do not rip a copy of Windows. They have blockers in the software to prevent this.

Sorry, I should clarify:

It's not a Windows install CD. It's a simple data CD that was created under windows, I suppose it's not strictly Windows specific. I just want to create an .iso image of the CD.

Use Disk Utility to create the image. Insert the CD, open Disk Utility, click on "New Image". Select which options to use and apply. Or if you have a Windows machine handy, use the free Ashampoo Burning Studio, or any one of the free burning utilities available. All can create an ISO from a CD or DVD.

I tried creating a .cdr image with Disk Utility with the intention of turning it into an .iso and it just failed with an input / output error.

If you're getting an IO error it sounds as though the disc has data errors.

As a test create a temp folder on your desktop and just try to copy the contents from the CD into that folder

I've tried using Disk Utility but there are too many options. Here is how you do it the Unix way. I have tested with my Mac Pro.

1. pop in your CD and open your Terminal
2. run the command df and you will see something like this:
$ df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2s1 1952853344 227819040 1724522304 12% /
/dev/disk2s0 907672 907672 0 100% /Volumes/CD1

3. The last line is your CD. My CD is labeled as CD1. Your may be something else. You need to also notice the beginning of that line: /dev/disk2s0. That's your CD/DVD device name.
4. you need to unmount the CD with this command: sudo umount /dev/disk2s0
5. now is the fun part, creating the iso:
sudo dd if=/dev/disk2s0 of=CD1.iso

explanation: if = Input File, in this case is your CD/DVD device. of = Output File, you can name the file name of your choice.

6. After a few minute, you will get your prompt back and it's done:
sudo dd if=/dev/disk2s0 of=CD1.iso
907672+0 records in
907672+0 records out
464728064 bytes transferred in 210.518293 secs (2207542 bytes/sec)