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Rufus 2.0 has been released

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#1 Akeo

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Posted 03 March 2015 - 11:06 PM

(Starting a new thread, since the previous one has grown quite big and this is a major release - Yet, I'm not going to shy away from shamelessly copy/pasting the blurb I wrote for the beta :ph34r:).

 

It is my great pleasure to announce the release of Rufus 2.0! :D

 

The Changelog for this version is as follows:

  • Major UI improvements (improved font, new info field, no separate progress dialog, etc.)
  • Add support for Windows To Go (when Rufus is running on Windows 8 or later)
  • Add support for Grub4DOS and GRUB 2 based images (e.g. FreeNAS)
  • Add portable application support, through a 'rufus.ini' file
  • Add native decompression support for DD images (.Z, .gz, .lzma, .bz2 and .xz)
  • Add seamless UEFI boot of NTFS partitions, for Windows ISOs with large files (>4GB)
  • Add support for Windows multipart install.swm
  • Add support for non Microsoft VHD drivers
  • Add Norwegian translation, courtesy of JED
  • Fix a crash on image selection when no device is present
  • Fix broken VHD support for non-English version of Windows
  • Fix write error for DD images that are not a multiple of the sector size
  • Fix broken Unicode support
  • Update Syslinux to 6.0.3
  • Other improvements and fixes

The points of interest that I'd like to stress out, in no particular order, is that Rufus should now look much nicer for eastern Asian languages (as long as you're not using XP... but you really shouldn't), the slightly annoying separate progress dialog is now gone, FreeNAS is now supported (through GRUB 2), seamless support for NTFS under EFI is provided for Windows images (convenient if you have a >4GB install.wim for instance) and the new info field should make the UI a bit more helpful for newcomers.

 

I'll also take a moment to explain how the portable feature works:

  • If you have a rufus.ini in the directory where you are launching Rufus from (even if it's a blank one), Rufus will use that, instead of the registry, to store its settings.
  • Also, if any part of the executable name contains a 'p' (for portable), Rufus will create a rufus.ini if one doesn't already exists, and use that one. This means that if you call the executable rufus_2.0p.exe, Rufus will automagically activate its portable mode.
    Oh, there is now a convenient link to such a portable download on the homepage - isn't that nice? ^_^
  • The format of rufus.ini is documented here.

Note however that portability does not equate unmodified registry, as Rufus will still apply LGP policies to temporarily avoid the annoying "Hey, I detected a new drive - do you want to format it?" messages that Windows would otherwise pop out. If you are that paranoid about registry changes, you can however use portable mode and enable DisableLGP, in which case registry changes originating from Rufus should be removed. You will of course get the annoying popups from Windows then.

 

With regards to Windows To Go, all I want to say is: You need to be running Rufus on Windows 8 or later for the 'Windows To Go' feature to be available to you, provided you use a compatible image (which include some Windows 7 ISOs). If you run Rufus on Windows 7 or earlier, you'll have to look elsewhere for Windows to Go support for the time being. The reason is detailed here. The Rufus usage notes also provide a bit more details with regards to To Go support in Rufus.

 

Also, while some people have reported success with Windows 10 (at least for the x86_32 version), at this stage, you should really expect Windows To Go support NOT to work for Windows 10, as all the tests I have conducted with 10 x64 have ended with an infinite boot, even when using the official Microsoft To Go tool from a Windows 10 Enterprise Preview 2 physical installation.

Thus, as far as I am concerned, ANYTHING that is preview, such as Windows 10, is unsupported which means you're on your own with Windows 10 until the formal release...

 

Finally, if you want to understand why this new version of Rufus is a bit plumper than the last one, have a look here.

 

Enjoy! ^_^


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#2 TheHive

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Posted 05 March 2015 - 09:44 AM

:clapping:

 

 

  • Add native decompression support for DD images (.Z, .gz, .lzma, .bz2 and .xz)

How does this work.

 

 



#3 Akeo

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Posted 05 March 2015 - 10:18 AM

That's fairly straightforward. If it detects that you are feeding it a file with one of the extensions above, Rufus will uncompress the beginning of the file to see if it contains a boot marker at 0x1FE, and if it does, it treats it as a compressed DD image (and decompresses it on the fly as it is being applied to USB).

 

In other words, if you have a DD Image of a bootable disk (say disk_image.img), you can compress it using your favourite supported compression method, such as bzip2, and you can then feed the (usually) much smaller disk_image.img.bz2 to Rufus...

You will also often find already compressed DD images on the internet, especially for UNIX bootable stuff.



#4 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 05 March 2015 - 10:22 AM

It is my great pleasure to announce the release of Rufus 2.0! :D
... 
Enjoy! ^_^

Thanks, great news! :thumbup:
 

The points of interest that I'd like to stress out, in no particular order, is that Rufus should now look much nicer for eastern Asian languages (as long as you're not using XP... but you really shouldn't), ...

I will take this as an OK for me to use Rufus in my XP in Italian :smiling9:, though sometimes I like to use Korean or Chinese interface, I guess it is a limitation I can bear ;).

:duff:
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#5 Akeo

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Posted 05 March 2015 - 10:59 AM

I will take this as an OK for me to use Rufus in my XP in Italian :smiling9:, though sometimes I like to use Korean or Chinese interface, I guess it is a limitation I can bear ;).

 

I'll take that as a cue that you want to know more about that... :smiling9:

And since it details part of the trouble one has trying to maintain an application that is compatible with will-you-die-already Windows XP, here goes:

 

The default interface font used by Windows XP (MS Shell Dlg) is awfully blocky for Asian languages, and Microsoft didn't bother to try to update it to apply all the smoothing technology it uses for the western part of the font, even in its later instances of Windows.

 

The end result is that, if you are using Rufus 1.4.12 in Japanese, even on a Windows 8.1 system, it looks something like this (zoomed 2x):

 

jp_winxp.png

 

On the other hand, if you switch to using a western language, you get nice font smoothing.

 

With Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced Segoe UI to replace MS Shell Dlg as the default interface font (that's one of the many subtle changes that make Windows Vista and later look slightly different from XP). And one of the long awaited features Segoe UI has for Asian language speakers is that it does font smoothing, for more than the Western part of the font. The end result is that, if you design your interface to use Segoe UI, you can now get this (this is from Rufus 2.0, again magnified 2x):

 

jp_win81.png

 

 

That's quite noticeably nicer (and would look even better if I had a high DPI screen), don't you think? ^_^

 

However, since Segoe UI is NOT included on Windows XP, and switching fonts on the fly for UI elements is a major PITA (there's no magical one line switch - you have to go through every single element to do it), this leaves application developers with 2 choices (well 3 really):

  • Use a single interface and keep using MS Shell Dlg everywhere (and ignore legitimate complaints of Asian users)
  • Use multiple interfaces, one that uses MS Shell Dlg for XP and Segoe UI for Vista and later
  • (preferred) Ditch XP support altogether and use a single interface with Segoe UI :wodoo:

In Rufus 2.0, I decided to go with... option 2. And that my friends is why you have the note about Rufus looking much nicer for Asian languages.

 

Oh, and as a side note, since Windows development is never that simple, I actually have 4 separate interfaces currently defined in Rufus: One for Vista and later and left to right languages, one for XP and left to right languages, one for Vista and later and right to left languages, one for XP and right to left languages... :blink:



#6 Akeo

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Posted 18 March 2015 - 09:53 PM

:beta: Rufus 2.1 BETA is now available at the usual location.

 

Changes for the upcoming release include:

  • Add 32 bit support to UEFI:NTFS boot
  • Add standalone UEFI:NTFS boot installation, in advanced mode
  • Add Vietnamese translation, courtesy of thanhtai2009
  • Disable support for ISOs that hide their GRUB version (looking at you Kaspersky!)
  • Fix broken Windows UEFI installation when using GPT/NTFS (#461)
  • Fix creation of 32 bit UEFI Windows 10 installation flash drives (#462)
  • Other improvements (Notify when no update is available on manual check, add label for UEFI:NTFS partition, etc.)

As usual, please let me know if you find any issue (preferably using the github issue tracker, so that it's easier to, err, track... :go_fish:)

 

Enjoy! :fish:


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#7 TheHive

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Posted 19 March 2015 - 09:14 AM


:loleverybody:

 

Will try to test UEFI support for 32bit.



#8 Akeo

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Posted 23 March 2015 - 11:05 PM

Rufus 2.1 has now been released. The changelog is the same as the one I posted above.



#9 alacran

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Posted 24 March 2015 - 01:48 AM

@ Akeo

 

I think this is false positive, but I want to let you know Avast is blocking the download, I had to deactivate Avast in order to download v2.1

Best Regards



#10 Akeo

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Posted 24 March 2015 - 01:59 AM

Gee, I wondered which of these £%&*( antivirus would produce a false positive this time...

 

Please see here. I'm afraid I have better things to do than confirm yet another friggin' false positive.

The only thing I'll say then is: When it's clear that you can't win the game, the only winning move is not to play.


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#11 DavidB

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Posted 24 March 2015 - 05:42 AM

Gee, I wondered which of these £%&*( antivirus would produce a false positive this time...

 

Please see here. I'm afraid I have better things to do than confirm yet another friggin' false positive.

The only thing I'll say then is: When it's clear that you can't win the game, the only winning move is not to play.

 

"Guilty until proven innocent" - the way cheap/adware AVs achieve (so-called) better results in detecting viruses :rolleyes:

But lately, even some of the professional AVs began to use this "technique"...

And more and more developers have to pay the "protection fee". Sorry, I meant to say "digital signature" :rolleyes:



#12 TheHive

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Posted 24 March 2015 - 08:31 AM

Want to try the

Windows To Go

if time permits.

 

Can it be put on Removable Hard drive



#13 Akeo

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Posted 24 March 2015 - 10:29 AM

And more and more developers have to pay the "protection fee". Sorry, I meant to say "digital signature" :rolleyes:

 

Well the thing is, Rufus is digitally signed.

 

But I agree that all the current digital signature circus boils down to these days is add an entry fee to the development of applications... which malware authors couldn't care less about (they'll easily make up for it) and can work around...

 

@TheHive,

 

Removable HDDs should work with Windows To Go just fine (you'll just need to enable their listing in Rufus). As a matter of fact, they might work better since they should have the FIXED attribute, which UFDs usually don't and which can be a problem for UEFI/GPT installs.

 

The thing to keep in mind with To Go support in Rufus right now (but I'll be working on removing those limitations if possible) is that this is only available if running Rufus on Windows 8.0 or later, and also, if you want to create a Windows To Go drive for a specific version of Windows, you will need to run Rufus on the same version of Windows (or later) or you may encounter errors. This means for instance that, if you want to create a Windows 8.1 To Go drive, you should run Rufus on Windows 8.1 or later, and not on Windows 8.0. Finally, I'll just remind you that only install.wim are supported for To Go in Rufus (which means that the 10041 build of Windows 10, that comes with an install.esd, will not provide the To Go option).

 

The restrictions above mostly have to do with limitations of the native WIM API on Windows, but I have an enhancement request (#453) to see if it's possible to use wimlib to work around those (but please don't expect anything soon!).



#14 Akeo

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Posted 31 May 2015 - 07:51 PM

I am happy to announce the release of Rufus 2.2.

 

The Changelog for this version is as follows:

  • Modernize the language selection button, courtesy of David Warner
  • Add keyboard accessibility, courtesy of David Warner
  • Add a clear indication of when UEFI-CSM is to be used
  • Fix an USB detection issue and add support for ASUS UASP "Turbo Mode"
  • Fix prevention of Windows shutdown when Rufus is idle
  • Improve UI on high DPI monitors
  • Update Grub4DOS to 0.4.6a [2015.05.18]
  • Other UI improvements and fixes, including translation updates

Please visit https://rufus.akeo.ie for the download.



#15 netlord

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Posted 15 June 2015 - 03:11 PM

Hi

 

I have also the Problem with the autorun.inf (what you already described in your faq).

 

And I know - its only a click to prevent Rufus from creating an autorun.inf - but cant you add a switch (maybe in the ini-file) so that this check box is unchecked every time i start Rufus?

 

THX



#16 pscEx

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Posted 20 June 2015 - 10:47 AM

Is there currently a chance, to bring an ElTorioto ISO to usb?

IF no,  planned?

 

Peter



#17 Akeo

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Posted 20 June 2015 - 12:25 PM

#63.

 

Not a very high priority at this stage, as this is more complex than it looks and in most cases, you should be able to make do with Rufus and 7-zip by creating a FreeDOS drive with Rufus and then either extracting the El Torito image content or the ISO content using 7-zip as detail in the Seatools example from the FAQ.

 

Of course, the tricky part is making sure the extracted AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS or whatnot will work with the FreeDOS USB. More often than not you'll see that the El Torito content is designed to use A: as the drive... which is why it's a lot more tricky than people think to add El Torito support (unless of course you use memory image mode, but that kind of sucks since you can't edit the content then).

 

PS: The current Rufus thread is here and this is where you should preferably to post questions or comments.

 

EDIT by pscEx: moved both posts here!



#18 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 20 June 2015 - 04:44 PM

To be fair El-Torito  by itself means "nothing" as it defines three different emulation modes:

  1. Floppy emulation <- the one that normally (obviously) gets letter A: , as it is actually emulating fd0 or first floppy drive
  2. Hard disk Emulation
  3. No emulation

So, once narrowed the scope to only "Floppy emulation", I am failing to see why one would think that it is a "bad thing" to not use (say) grub4dos or syslinux (or anything else) to map the floppy image to a virtual floppy in memory, I mean it is not like the original .iso (please read as CD/DVD) is writable, so the fact that the memory mapped floppy image (while usually actually writable) is "non-persistent" should not be a problem.

 

Since (still say) grub4dos has features to directly support such .iso's (El-Torito Floppy emulation DOS based) mapped to (0xff) or (hd32) directly (i.e. without needing to extract the El-Torito floppy image) I wonder what is the actual issue. :unsure:

 

:duff:

Wonko 



#19 Akeo

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Posted 20 June 2015 - 05:09 PM

I am failing to see why one would think that it is a "bad thing" to not use (say) grub4dos or syslinux (or anything else) to map the floppy image to a virtual floppy in memory

 

Because most of these images tend to be for old stuff, you may need to inject a driver or edit stuff to access new hardware or even to have the original application to run. Or maybe it's a firmware installation image, and you got a newer firmware (that wasn't created by the manufacturer because they have long moved away from doing any development for that old stuff) and want to replace the firmware on that image. Or maybe you have something like memtest on that USB, which you use occasionally, and you don't want to have to recreate your USB from scratch every time there is a new version and just replace the executable (because you're also using the USB for storing data).

 

One of the design premisses I've had for Rufus has always been: "What's the point of running stuff of writeable media, if you can't easily edit it?", and it's within this this concept that I'm planning to add El Torito, because, if I was a user of Rufus, anything else would sound a bit too limiting...



#20 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 20 June 2015 - 07:30 PM

Well, as long as it is an El-Torito Floppy Emulation .iso image, it is just a matter of dd-ing the floppy image back to the .iso (as direct replacement of the sectors used by it).

 

One could use a "dummy" floppy image (or a set of them for the three "canonical" sizes of 1.2, 1.44 and 2.88 Mb (though this does not cover the actual possible sizes, that go all the way up to around 36 Mb, I would bet that 95% of existing Dos based Floppy Emulation .iso's are 1.44 Mb, and 4.989% are 2.88 Mb in size, with a 0.01% 1.2 Mb and 0.001% of other bigger sizes) as intermediate file (editable by direct mapping) and then dd it to the .iso once modified.

 

But still if someone wants to update a .iso it is usually more convenient to do so "offline" (i.e. NOT when actually booted to its  Floppy Emulation image).

 

Anyway, entirely a S.E.P., the only thing I wanted to highlight was the triple nature of El-Torito .iso's, of which Floppy Emulation is only one.

 

:duff:

Wonko



#21 Akeo

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Posted 23 August 2015 - 04:57 PM

It's been a long time coming, but I am pleased to announce that a :beta: for the upcoming Rufus 2.3 has now been released.

 

The 2.3 version is bringing the following changes:

  • Detect ISOHybrid images and prompt users on how they should be written
  • Add MD5/SHA1 checksum verification ('#' button on the status bar)
  • Add Zip decompression support for DD Images
  • Add a cheat mode to save the current USB to uncompressed VHD (Alt-V)
  • Add a cheat mode for ISO timestamp preservation (Alt-T)
  • Add a cheat mode for USB enumeration debugging (Alt-.)
  • Disable MS-DOS creation for Windows 10 or later (FreeDOS is still available)
  • Fix Windows To Go creation issues, and enable access to internal disks
  • Fix UEFI support for Fedora ISOs
  • Fix some USB enumeration issues
  • Other improvements and fixes, including translation updates

As usual, you can download this version from here, and you should use the github issue tracker if you think you uncovered a problem with this version.

 

The only comment I'll make on the above is with regards to MS-DOS and Windows 10. As you may or may not be aware, Microsoft removed the diskcopy.dll, that contained the flat floppy image with the MS-DOS files, which is what Windows used when formatting a bootable floppy, and which Rufus also used. And since these files are proprietary and not redistributable, I've had no choice but to disable MS-DOS altogether when Rufus is running on Windows 10. But that's not a big loss if you ask me, as FreeDOS is still available... -_-


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#22 Akeo

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 11:04 PM

And Rufus 2.3 has now been released.

 

The ChangeLog for the release version is the same as for the Beta above.



#23 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 09:55 AM

And Rufus 2.3 has now been released.

 

The ChangeLog for the release version is the same as for the Beta above.

Nice :).


The only comment I'll make on the above is with regards to MS-DOS and Windows 10. As you may or may not be aware, Microsoft removed the diskcopy.dll, that contained the flat floppy image with the MS-DOS files, which is what Windows used when formatting a bootable floppy, and which Rufus also used. And since these files are proprietary and not redistributable, I've had no choice but to disable MS-DOS altogether when Rufus is running on Windows 10. But that's not a big loss if you ask me, as FreeDOS is still available... -_-

Yep, most probably they removed it to reduce the size of the  download ;).

 

I'll open a new thread here:

http://reboot.pro/fo...reedos-and-dos/

let's see if we can find a legal source for the morons less experienced users that are stuck on Windows 10 only.

 

:duff:

Wonko



#24 Akeo

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Posted 07 September 2015 - 10:50 PM

Just gonna mention, since I kinda got my hand forced, that there's a poll going on about whether Windows XP support should be removed from Rufus 3.0 (which is still quite a long way away - there will be a few more 2.x releases before I start looking at 3.x).

 

The proposed plan is to drop both the ability to run Rufus 3.x and later on Windows XP, as well as the ability to create bootable media from XP or similar ISOs (including when Rufus is run on later platforms, such as Windows 7). The goal of this change is to simplify the sourcecode and allow the global use of modern Windows APIs, which will make Rufus easier to maintain and should ultimately increase its stability, especially as I am not planning to do any more work and testing regarding XP support in the future.

 

Of course this doesn't mean that XP users will be left without any XP support - they'll just have to use the last 2.x version (which of course will remain available from the site, as is every single version of Rufus that was released).

 

If you want, you can take the survey HERE:

Vote "Yes" is you want Rufus 3.0 to remove XP support, "No" to keep it.

Obviously, the results of this vote are still no guarantee that I will either keep or remove XP support in 3.0. It's mostly there as a means to indicate  how much outcry I would get if I were to remove XP support altogether.

Finally, if you are interested to see the trend so far, the current poll results can be viewed here.



#25 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 08 September 2015 - 12:05 PM

Obviously, the results of this vote are still no guarantee that I will either keep or remove XP support in 3.0. It's mostly there as a means to indicate  how much outcry I would get if I were to remove XP support altogether.

Well, the very good thing :thumbsup: is that you are honest about it, it is the same thing that most companies do, with the difference that they try to convince the users that they will actually listen to them.

 

Judging from the current results (obviously temporarily) you could use flippism as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipism

 

:duff:

Wonko







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