345 replies to this topic

[Akeo]

v1.1.7 is now out. This is a quick bugfix release, as 1.1.6 was setting the bootable disk ID wrong of DOS and isolinux, which could result in non-bootable UFDs on some platforms. It also fixes a potential issue where minint WinPE 1.x ISOs that used minint as their source (instead of i386 which is the case for BartPE) may fail to boot.

Unless more bugfixes are needed, this should be the last version from the 1.1.x branch, and the last to see 2 executables for FreeDOS and non-FreeDOS.
v1.2.0 will be a single release (with FreeDOS embedded always), that adds UI improvements, such as taskbar icon progress in Windows 7, as well as a toggleable panel to offer advanced options.

[SwedenXP]

Akeo - Rufus (v1.1.7) works lika a charm ..

My home computer broke down - lucky I had made a test usb-stick (preparing for win update day tuesday) - never tried it before - but it worked just fine.

Installed an nLited win xp sp3 + updates.

Big Thanx

SwedenXP

Edited by SwedenXP, 08 April 2012 - 08:01 PM.

[BW~Merlin]

Does rufus support Redhat enterprise linux? I tried using rufus to turn a Redhat iso into a bootable USB but gave up as it was taking forever (over an hour then I gave up) so I don't know if the end result works.

[Akeo]

It should. You will understand, as a single developer of a free application, I can't test every single Linux distribution out there, especially if they require subscription. However, anything based on isolinux/syslinux, which would be the vast majority of Linux ditros, is expected to work.

As to the slow copy, this is also expected if the ISO contains a large amount of small files. If I had all the time in the world, I would probably try to improve on this, by not letting Windows handle the FAT32 write operations, but instead adding my own FAT32 layer in Rufus and treating the USB as a raw block device (since we're formatting the whole thing anyway), especially as this sounds like an interesting challenge, but for now, we have to content with the FS limitations of Windows, which makes writes of a large number of small files to a FAT32 USB an excruciatingly slow process... Or you can try one of the tools that deal with ISO emulation and can use the ISO file as a whole.

Did the ISO extraction process appear to freeze, or did you still see file progress when you cancelled it?

[.William.]

Hi,

First, thank you for sharing your application with us ! I am surely going to try it out (and report my findings when relevant).

Can you elaborate on the low level formatting abilities of Rufus ? That's an interesting feature.

Cheers

[Akeo]

Well, currently Rufus uses fmifs.dll and its FormatEx call for formatting a partition, as most formatting tools do (thanks to the investigative work of Mark Russinovich who documented these calls).

However, since it writes the MBR and partition boot record, it has access the physical or logical drive in raw mode (and it already makes use of this - see below). With regards to using that capability for speeding up the extraction process, since Rufus also currently doesn't bother about partition preservation, one could probably reuse one of the FAT libraries out there, and just fill FAT blocks in memory with the ISO content, so that only large blocks of raw data are ever transferred to the device. The expectation there is that, by constructing the FAT content in RAM, we should then be able to get close to the theoretical USB writing speeds when writing the raw data. However, the one issue I see is that, while doing so for FAT shouldn't be much of a challenge (but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be time consuming to implement), as a few FOSS FAT libraries exist, we would also need to do the same for NTFS, which is a lot less friendly with regards to FOSS accessibility => Unless both FAT and NTFS extraction can be improved in the same manner, I don't really see the feature worth implementing in Rufus.

Now, if your question isn't about speedups but with regards to actual low-level formatting, the bad-blocks check of Rufus can very much be used as a low-level formatting utility.
Depending on the number of passes you select, it will write 0xAA, 0x55, 0xFF and 0x00 for the whole physical drive, including the MBR. Whether 0x00 or another value is used when filling the drive shouldn't matter much, so I very much consider that Rufus can be used as a low-level formatting tool.
Now, there might also exist a lower-level formatting capability for the USB device, since physical flash drive access in Windows doesn't mean much with regards to flash chip access on the hardware (actual addresses are expected to be shuffled around by the UFD circuitry to prevent wear and tear, so a byte may not reside at the same location on the actual hardware from one write to the next), but such access would be proprietary and undocumented => difficult to support.

[BW~Merlin]

Did the ISO extraction process appear to freeze, or did you still see file progress when you cancelled it?

It was making slow progress is the best I can say. Maybe I will let it run while I am at work and see if it actually works.

[Wonko the Sane]

Can you elaborate on the low level formatting abilities of Rufus ? That's an interesting feature.

I guess there is still some confusion on this.
There is NO "low level" formatting possible of ANY kind.
Low level formatting is something of the past.
The most you can do nowadays is Direct disk access (better said RAW disk access, since it is NOT "direct" at all), i.e. you can write values to bytes/sectrs.
As Akeo explained you will anyway write to the sector that the device micro-controller will tell you to write to, and not necessarily the sector you actually want to write to, due to "wear-leveling" that is now included in most idf not all USB flash controllers.
Lower level formatting (speaking of USB sticks) can be achieved through the Manufacturer "Mass Production Tool" or however "Proprietary utility".
For ATA/PATA/SATA disks it is available the ATA specs "Safe Erase" which is lower level then any Direct or RAW disk access.
A lower level on ATA/PATA/SATA is still available through the disk built-in command processor, available through a "special" connection (TTL level serial converter) through Hyperterminal or through a few specialized softwares.


Wonko

[BW~Merlin]

It was making slow progress is the best I can say.  Maybe I will let it run while I am at work and see if it actually works.

Okay I let it run while I was out and I have come back to an error message saying "Error: ISO image extraction failure".

[Akeo]

OK. If you have a chance to run that test again, it would be interesting to have DebugView running, as Rufus sends a lot of information there, and it may tell us what the extraction issue was.
Can you please provide the full name of the ISO you used and where you got it from? If I can get my hands on it (or on a similar one), I'll give it a try. Also, can you tell the version of Windows you were running Rufus on?

[TheHive]

Testing Rufus v1.1.7
Windows 7 Ultimate ISO to 8GB USB Stick
ISO is about - 4.37 GB (4,702,040,064 bytes)
It includes program apps in a folder in the ISO. That way I dont forget and not have to look for them.
 01 Rufus windows7 ISO to USB Stick.jpg   31.01K   12 downloads
 02 Rufus windows7 ISO to USB Stick.jpg   42.75K   13 downloads
 03 Rufus windows7 ISO to USB Stick.jpg   28.88K   12 downloads
 04 Rufus windows7 ISO to USB Stick.jpg   28.38K   10 downloads
 05 Rufus windows7 ISO to USB Stick.jpg   30.29K   8 downloads
Took about 19 Minutes to finish the tranfer of ISO to USB.

Will test the USb Stick on a Laptop and report after finishing the test.

[TheHive]

test machine
dell inspiron 1520 laptop

Test 1
Tried to boot a livexp iso using the Zalman >ZM-VE200 enclosure.
test boot = usb boot not possible - wont recognize it to boot.

Test 2
Use the 8GB USB Windows 7 created by Rufus to boot up
test boot =Succesful -usb stick recognized and boots into Windows installer
Did not test the full installation yet.


test3
LiveXP 2012 burnt to a 4GB usb stick using Rufus
LiveXP iso 395 MB (414,765,056 bytes)
Failed to finish the iso to USB transfer.
Test3a
 Rufus livexp 2012 ISO to USB Stick.jpg   38.29K   2 downloads
 Rufus livexp 2012 ISO to USB Stick 2.jpg   38.59K   4 downloads

Test3b
Same result - Error
 2.jpg   40.1K   5 downloads

[Akeo]

Test 1: Rufus does not officially support USB HDDs. You used the Alt-F cheat mode to enable the listing of your drive, right? Or was the drive listed without doing anything special
Test 2: So far so good
Test 3: I just created a Live XP 2012 ISO using Windows XP SP3 (EN, MSDN) and the default options, and it extracted and booted just fine. The resulting ISO was 303 MB. Can you please tell the ISO you used as source in WinBuilder? If you use that original ISO in Rufus, do you get the same issue? If not, can you try a Live XP 2012 generated ISO with the default options? Also can you please run Rufus with DebugView running, as it usually provides a more explicit report of what the problem was.

[TheHive]

Test 1: Rufus does not officially support USB HDDs. You used the Alt-F cheat mode to enable the listing of your drive, right? Or was the drive listed without doing anything special

Should have been more specific. Rufus is not used in the test for the Zalman &gt;ZM-VE200 enclosure<br />
It is an enclosure that is suppose to act as either or both a USB Virtual DVD and or a Regular HD. So it should boot using a regular iso. But it seems to have problems booting from some dell systems.

Test 3: I just created a Live XP 2012 ISO using Windows XP SP3 (EN, MSDN) and the default options, and it extracted and booted just fine. The resulting ISO was 303 MB. Can you please tell the ISO you used as source in WinBuilder?

en_winxp_pro_with_sp3_vl.iso

If you use that original ISO in Rufus, do you get the same issue?

TESTING
Result = Working result to USB Transfer
 3 Testing Original WinXP SP3 ISO.jpg   26.83K   1 downloads  4.jpg   29.63K   1 downloads

TESTING booting
First Install phase seemed to be working.
2nd Install phase proceeded the installation.
Seems to be working.

If not, can you try a Live XP 2012 generated ISO with the default options?

What are suppose to be the default options. I just noticed that it has NTFS selected. And on first run when I select the USB stick no option to select ISO is given. I have to run the the program once to auto quick format and create extended label before I can choose an ISO. Does it matter if its NTFS or Fat32.
 1.jpg   28.53K   1 downloads
TESTING
After the first run of default settings it had. Im given option to select ISO.
 2.jpg   30.54K   0 downloads

Other test
If I select fat32 and then NTFS. im given the chance to select ISO. But if Ntfs is select as default first then It does let one pick the ISO.
 1.jpg   28.53K   1 downloads

Also can you please run Rufus with DebugView running, as it usually provides a more explicit report of what the problem was.

Dont know how to use that.

[TheHive]

Test 3: can you try a Live XP 2012 generated ISO with the default options?

Same error as before. Built LiveXP using default settings. ISO was about 304 MB (319,737,856 bytes)
 1.jpg   38.46K   2 downloads

[TheHive]

Finally seeing something in DebugView. Will test using that while testing the ISO to USB. Didnt seem to want to show anything yesterday.
Testing

[Akeo]

Sorry for the late reply.

What are suppose to be the default options.

For Rufus, these would be the options that are selected after you pick the ISO. But I was talking about the default Live XP options, which you got further down.

I just noticed that it has NTFS selected. And on first run when I select the USB stick no option to select ISO is given.

That shouldn't be the case... If you have an USB device selected, the ISO option should not be grayed out. I'm curious to see what DebugView says when it detects your drive.

I have to run the the program once to auto quick format and create extended label before I can choose an ISO.

Very weird... I'd like to be able to reproduce that problem.

Does it matter if its NTFS or Fat32.

For anything Windows, NTFS is the only option you can use. Rufus does not support booting Windows outside of NTFS.

With regards to DebugView, just run and it will populate data automatically (you don't really have to do anything). If the data is too big, you will find my e-mail on the Rufus page.

[TheHive]

Test Log Results.
dbgview liveXP 2012 With changed default settings ISO
http://temp.reboot.p...ettings ISO.log

dbgview liveXP 2012 default Settigs ISO
http://temp.reboot.p...Settigs ISO.log

[Akeo]

I'm afraid these logs don't contain any messages from Rufus...

One thing I failed to mention is that you should run DebugView with administrative privileges (but I think it asks to do so), and, if you're still not getting any messages from Rufus (there should at least be a very explicit "*** RUFUS INIT ***" and "*** RUFUS EXIT ***" when starting and closing Rufus), you may want to check that "Capture Win32" and "Capture Global Win32" are enabled in the Capture menu.

Somehow, I'm starting to think that your machine may have some restrictions applied, which may explain what we're experiencing...

Your help is much appreciated, as I'm hoping we can figure out what's wrong and prevent others from running into the same problems.

[TheHive]

I'm afraid these logs don't contain any messages from Rufus...

One thing I failed to mention is that you should run DebugView with administrative privileges (but I think it asks to do so), and, if you're still not getting any messages from Rufus (there should at least be a very explicit "*** RUFUS INIT ***" and "*** RUFUS EXIT ***" when starting and closing Rufus), you may want to check that "Capture Win32" and "Capture Global Win32" are enabled in the Capture menu.

Testing

Log output
http://temp.reboot.p...Rufus Log 3.LOG

Somehow, I'm starting to think that your machine may have some restrictions applied, which may explain what we're experiencing...

I dont think I have any restriction on myself.


You can watch the swf's on youre browse. Just copy the address to the address bar.

Option1
Test 1 Shows what happens and how I use the Start button to fix the no option to select an ISO on first run. I think this happens when you have empty MIcro and SD card reader as drives and no SD card is in them.

http://temp.reboot.pro/files/Rufus%20test%201.swf

Option2
Test 2 Shows how to fix it without having to push the start button. Instead you go to switch from NTFS to Fat32 and then back to NTFS and then you get the option to select an ISO.

http://temp.reboot.pro/files/Rufus%20test%202.swf

[TheHive]

Test
Windwos 7SE PE to USB
The transfer Worked.
This test was done on the same USB stick that I used to try to burn the LiveXP onto but failed to complete.
 Win7 SE PE.jpg   30.29K   17 downloads

Testing Windwos 7SE PE Bootup

Successful bootup.

[ChrisR]

Windwos 7SE PE to USB
The transfer Worked.

Successful bootup.

Yep, Rufus works well with Win7PE_SE with BootMGR and IsoLinux.

It would be nice if Rufus could integrate Grub MBR writing, in this case w7pese starts normally but with BootMgr instead of Grub4Dos (is it so dificult vs others boot options ?)

It would be nice too, to be able to launch Rufus with cmdline options (eg: ISO predefined, drive letter, file system) for a better integration in others projects.

I plan to write a script "Rufus CopyToUSB" in Win7PE_SE, the above changes would allow a perfect integration in this project, other projects, and a good things for users to know Rufus.

Regards,

[Atari800XL]

I second that "install Grub4Dos" option. Looking forward to having it in Win7PE_SE, as well....

Thanks again for making Rufus!

[renee]

Would someone be able to work with me? I am technical but have been hit by a car and have the effects of a head injury to deal with.

Renee

[renee]

Would someone be able to work with me? I am technical but have been hit by a car and have the effects of a head injury to deal with.
rmctwo at gmail dot com

Renee