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#26 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 05 December 2008 - 10:02 AM

Release 1.1.3

* Corrected one additional problem with the auto-detection of master boot records in image files. Some MBRs created by FreeBSD and OpenBSD were not correctly detected.

* Corrected a serious problem with proxy-type virtual disks where a malformed I/O message from the proxy server could cause blue-screens in some cases.

* The install package, imdiskinst.exe, now also includes binaries for 64-bit AMD and Intel architectures. The install scripts automatically installs the correct version for the architecture it is being installed on. The 64-bit versions have exactly the same features and limitations as the 32-bit version, except that the 64-bit versions can create and use larger RAM disks than 2 GB.

* The server-end program for ImDisk in proxy-mode, devio.exe has been updated. Auto-detection of file sizes now works under both Windows and *nix and it also supports auto-detection of master boot records and selecting parameters for a partition read from the master boot record. Support has also been added for dynamically expanding Microsoft .vhd files used with Virtual PC and Virtual Server. Fixed size .vhd files have been possible to mount directly with ImDisk before but this adds support for dynamically expanding .vhd files via devio.exe as a I/O proxy.

The tool devio.exe is a command line tool and can be downloaded here:
Windows version: http://www.ltr-data.se/files/devio.exe
FreeBSD version: http://www.ltr-data.se/files/devio.bz2 (bzip2 compressed)

#27 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 01 May 2009 - 03:31 PM

Release 1.1.4

* Partition auto-detection did not work with other sector sizes than 512 bytes. That is now corrected.

#28 fxscrpt

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Posted 01 May 2009 - 03:57 PM

Release 1.1.4

* Partition auto-detection did not work with other sector sizes than 512 bytes. That is now corrected.


Many thanks Olof :D

Peter

#29 amalux

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Posted 03 May 2009 - 05:52 PM

Release 1.1.4

* Partition auto-detection did not work with other sector sizes than 512 bytes. That is now corrected.

Thank you Olof for continuing to develop and improve this great and useful tool :D

:D

#30 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 23 November 2009 - 05:48 PM

Release 1.1.5

* Corrected a few things regarding creating and removing drive letters. Sometimes drive letters were not successfully removed when non-privileged users unmounted a virtual disk in Windows XP and later. This seems to work correctly now.

* Corrected shell notifications when drives are mounted and dismounted so that applications get correct notifications. Earlier, for example, notifications where sent out for drive letter X when drive Y was created or removed.

* A confirmation dialog has been added where user has to confirm mounting a virtual disk over a drive letter that is already in use. This dialog shows in graphical user interface only, the command line tool still mounts over existing drive letters without questions.

#31 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 07 December 2009 - 10:37 AM

Release 1.1.6

* Added further support for dismounting virtual disks without administrative privileges. Previously ordinary users could not force dismount of "fixed" virtual hard disks. This has now been changed so that any user can force a dismount.

* Changed the routine that removes virtual disks so that in case of RAM disks the drive letter and used memory are freed first before it waits for handles to close and actually removes the device object. This means that RAM can be freed immediately when a RAM disk is deleted even if the device cannot be immediately removed.

#32 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 10 December 2009 - 08:34 PM

-- BETA 1.2.0

I have experimented some and googled a lot and found what ImDisk was missing to successfully hold pagefiles on XP and later. There was a particular plug-and-play function that Windows uses to notify the driver that there is a pagefile being added to the disk. If the driver does not respond to that function at all, it was impossible to add a pagefile on that disk.

So, heavily experimental, version 1.2.0 with this addition is available at this location:
http://www.ltr-data....kinst_1.2.0.exe

Examples:
imdisk -a -s 2G -m S: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"

swapadd S:\pagefile.sys 1800M 1800M
This seems to work. If it turns out to be unstable for some reason you can try to use the new 'awealloc' driver to actually allocate the RAM disk memory.
imdisk -a -s 2G -f \\.\awealloc -m S: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"

swapadd S:\pagefile.sys 1800M 1800M
In that case you have to load the awealloc driver first:
net start awealloc

Other, security related changes in this release:

* Security change. On Windows XP and later, file permissions are now checked so that user mounting a new virtual disk actually has requested access to the image file to mount. If user does not have access to the image file, the device creation operation is denied by the driver and is reported as an "Access denied" error message to the user. On Windows 2000 and earlier the driver works like in previous versions, that is, without any access checks.

* Security fix. There was a privilege check missing in a callback that the helper service uses to callback into the driver when a proxy connection has been established and is ready to be used by the driver. Without this privilege check there is a backdoor into privileged kernel space. This has now been fixed.

Please note that this new 1.2.0 version is only available at http://www.ltr-data....kinst_1.2.0.exe while the usual http://www.ltr-data..../imdiskinst.exe url points to the existing 1.1.6 version. I provide the 1.2.0 version here now for anyone to try out and experiment with. It should not be treated as "production" code, it is a beta release.

#33 Galapo

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Posted 10 December 2009 - 10:56 PM

Wow, that's great news! Thanks indeed.

Regards,
Galapo.

#34 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 15 December 2009 - 08:39 AM

-- BETA 1.2.1

* The driver now supports 64 virtual drives instead of 32.

* The driver now makes itself completely resident (non-swappable) when a swapfile is created on it. There has not been any reports about crashes when ImDisk drives are used as swap space but I suspect there could have been possibility for some scenarios where the driver was swapped out onto itself, in which case it would have been impossible to read it back again.

Please note that this new 1.2.1 version is only available at http://www.ltr-data....kinst_1.2.1.exe while the usual http://www.ltr-data..../imdiskinst.exe url points to the existing 1.1.6 version. I provide the 1.2.1 version here now for anyone to try out and experiment with. It should not be treated as "production" code, it is a beta release.

#35 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 21 December 2009 - 07:40 AM

-- BETA 1.2.2

* Maximum number of devices was supposed to be 64 from version 1.2.1 and on, but that was not the case. Fixed now. Thanks Thorax for notifying me about this bug.

Please note that this new 1.2.2 version is only available at http://www.ltr-data....kinst_1.2.2.exe while the usual http://www.ltr-data..../imdiskinst.exe url points to the existing 1.1.6 version. I provide the 1.2.2 version here now for anyone to try out and experiment with. It should not be treated as "production" code, it is a beta release.

#36 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 23 December 2009 - 07:53 PM

-- Release 1.2.2

This version has now gone through usual testing and no further problems have been found. Turning 1.2.2 into current release status.

Merry christmas everyone!
:)

#37 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 28 December 2009 - 08:06 AM

-- Release 1.2.2

This version has now gone through usual testing and no further problems have been found. Turning 1.2.2 into current release status.

Merry christmas everyone!
:dubbio:


... and
-- Release 1.2.3

Little late news maybe, but just for correct revision history purposes, there was a version 1.2.3 released later 23 Dec 2009. That version corrected a problem with listing devices with device numbers above 31. No other changes.

#38 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 18 February 2010 - 03:50 PM

...and finally...

-- Update 18 Feb 2010
* ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver and Zero and Random Device Driver 64 bit drivers are now digitally signed with a certificate trusted by Microsoft. This means that they now work on 64 bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 without Windows running in testsigning mode.

No actual code changes in this update, the only changes are that 64 bit editions of .sys files are signed with a trusted certificate.

I would like to thank companies who have sent donations for making it possible to finance a three-year certificate for my open source drivers.
:smiling9:

#39 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 18 February 2010 - 04:46 PM

ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver and Zero and Random Device Driver 64 bit drivers are now digitally signed with a certificate trusted by Microsoft.

Good news. :smiling9:

I would like to thank companies who have sent donations for making it possible to finance a three-year certificate for my open source drivers.
:(

I guess that it would be appropriate to list them, I would consider not such a list as "advertising", but rather as a public tribute to their generosity/open mindedness from the Community. :cheers:

And as a sign of the greed that MS shows, by stealing - there is no other appropriate word for it :cheers: - some money from Open Source developers:
http://www.microsoft...gn/drvsign.mspx
http://devblog.peerb...ned-driver.html
thus slowing down or making more difficult the birth of new projects.

Should the companies that helped IMDISK through this process have some more "spare" money, here is another IMHO worthy project:
http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/
http://wincdemu.sysp...donate_sign.php
http://www.sysprogs.org/signing/
(and yes it is a sort of "competitor" to IMDISK, I hope this is not a problem)

:(

Wonko

#40 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 22 February 2010 - 10:12 AM

I guess that it would be appropriate to list them, I would consider not such a list as "advertising", but rather as a public tribute to their generosity/open mindedness from the Community. :(


Yes, I think I will do that.

Should the companies that helped IMDISK through this process have some more "spare" money, here is another IMHO worthy project:
http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/
http://wincdemu.sysp...donate_sign.php
http://www.sysprogs.org/signing/
(and yes it is a sort of "competitor" to IMDISK, I hope this is not a problem)


There are no actual "competitors" in the open source world, just sources for new ideas... :smiling9:

I have pointed out a few other projects, including that one, for at least one of the companies. I am hopeful and think that soon many driver signing problems for many projects could be solved in similar ways, especially now when 64 bit Windows is more widely used and the driver signing problem is drawn to attention at for example big companies running their own special software or distributing hardware with applications built on open source drivers.

But still, I clearly agree that this driver signing policy is bad and counter-productive and just means that it is way more difficult to start up a new driver project. As long as "malware companies" can just spend some money to get their drivers signed the whole policy is pointless. Nothing else.

#41 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 25 February 2010 - 12:59 PM

-- Release 1.2.4
* When registry settings where setup for the driver to auto-create a virtual disk when driver is loaded, specified drive letter was not assigned for the device. This has now been corrected.

#42 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 02 March 2010 - 10:07 PM

-- Release 1.2.5
* Registry settings for auto-creating a virtual memory backed virtual disk pre-loaded with an image file did not work without setting disk size explicitly on 64 bit versions. This has now been corrected to work as expected, that is, disk size is automatically detected from image file size like in 32 bit version.

#43 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 06 March 2010 - 09:37 AM

-- Release 1.2.6
* When contents of a disk volume is saved as an image file from Control Panel applet or using Explorer context menu option it is now ensured that the resultning image file has the same size as the saved disk volume. This means that even if the underlying filesystem driver does not return all data at the end of the disk volume the image file will still be padded and filled up to the matching size so that everything works correctly when the image file is later mounted as a virtual disk.

#44 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 06 March 2010 - 04:31 PM

-- Release 1.2.7
* A correction was made to the routine that saves disk contents as an image file. Thanks to "TheK" for suggesting this fix.

#45 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 09 March 2010 - 02:43 PM

-- Release 1.2.8
* Further corrections to the routine that saves disk contents as an image file. Buffer sizes are now adjusted to make sure that the complete disk contents are saved.

#46 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 07 June 2010 - 02:08 PM

-- Release 1.3.0
* New registry setting DisallowedDriveLetters that can be used to specify drive letters not allowed to be used for ImDisk virtual disks. It should be a string value containing drive letters to disallow. The value should be created under the key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ImDisk\Parameters.
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#47 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 27 July 2010 - 02:28 PM

-- Release 1.3.1
Two bugfixes.
* Device control code IOCTL_IMDISK_QUERY_DEVICE did not report image file offset.
* On Windows versions with UAC, proxy connection did not work because of permission errors when connecting to the helper service.

#48 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 09 December 2010 - 09:23 PM

-- Beta release 1.4.0

* Corrected a serious bug that seems to have particularily caused blue screen crashes on 64 bit Windows versions on multi-processor computers. Thanks to Bruce Cran for helping the project with debugging on 64 bit architecture.

* Graphical user interface, that is Control Panel applet and right-click menu option in Explorer now shows option to add MBR (Master Boot Record) while saving disk contents to image file.

* Algorithm for selecting default virtual disk geometry (C/H/S geometry) for virtual hard disk volumes changed. From this version, driver will auto-select 255/63/512 geometry in most cases. Only exception from this is when virtual disk is smaller than about 2 GB in which case smaller tracks per cylinder size is choosen. User defined virtual geometry can still be manually selected using command line or API directly.

* ImDisk source archive now contains a subdirectory called ImDiskNet. This is a .NET dll file which could be used from for example VB.NET or C# to create/modify/delete/save etc virtual disks. This dll also contains a class that can be used as a COM object from VB6 or VBScript etc. This dll is also available for direct download here: http://www.ltr-data....s/ImDiskNet.dll

* 64 bit setup now installs 32 bit imdisk.cpl and imdisk.exe in addition to the usual 64 bit versions. This means that API calls and command line calls will work from 32 bit applications even on 64 bit Windows without tweaking with installing dlls manually in correct directories etc.

* Updated "devio" tool. This version supports both reading and writing dynamic resizing .vhd files used by Microsoft Virtual PC, Virtual Server and Hyper-V. Earlier version had a serious bug that would corrupt disk image when mounted for both reading and writing.

* Changed notification that is sent to other applications when a new virtual disk is created. ImDisk does no longer wait for all applications to process the notification. It however still waits for all applications to process the notification that is sent when a virtual disk is about to be deleted.

This is a beta release so far and it is only available here:
http://www.ltr-data....kinst_1.4.0.exe
It has not been fully tested yet, but it would be great to get some comments about the new things in this version.

The usual download URL still points to the 1.3.1 version.

Edited by Olof Lagerkvist, 10 December 2010 - 08:47 AM.
Forgot to mention the notification changes


#49 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 13 January 2011 - 01:59 PM

-- Final release 1.4.0

* Changed version 1.4.0 from beta to final. Nothing changed. Everything seems well. :)

#50 Olof Lagerkvist

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Posted 13 March 2011 - 04:23 PM

-- Release 1.4.1

* Corrected some serious memory allocation bugs, memory access bugs etc for 64 bit version. Hopefully this will solve problems reported for large memory disks. Big thanks to David Wren for debugging!

* Also changed the "attached disk notification" sent to other applications in an attempt to solve a few problems reported about invisible and incompatible ImDisk drives on Windows 7.




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