v4.5 (hotfix)

This release has been updated with new binaries to fix a bug that broke the program entirely on Windows 7. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Upstream changes:

Add new advanced option to perform [runtime UEFI media validation](https://github.com/pbatard/uefi-md5sum) of suitable images (Windows, most Linux)
Move the Use Rufus MBR advanced option to a cheat mode (Alt-A)
Fix truncation of VHDX images, as well as a benign error message when writing VHD/VHDX (https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/2468)
Fix support for Linux persistence in some configurations (Mint, Ubuntu 24.04)
Fix multiple potential vulnerabilities (with thanks to Mansour Gashasbi)
Update internal GRUB to version 2.12
Update UEFI:NTFS to latest (now always uses the ntfs-3g driver, rather than the [buggy AMI NTFS one](https://github.com/pbatard/AmiNtfsBug))
Increase buffer size when copying ISO files, in an attempt to minimize the [AMI NTFS UEFI driver bug](https://github.com/pbatard/AmiNtfsBug)
Improve partition creation handling
Don't display the WUE dialog when a conflicting unattend.xml already exists (https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/2451)

Local changes:

Removed annoying nag about my builds being unofficial.
The update feature and most of its code have been removed. This was done as this feature would only download the upstream Rufus release, which obviously doesn't work on Windows 7.
Most references to "Rufus" have been changed to "Rufus 7".

v4.4

Pulled from upstream.

• Add workaround for distros that use broken symbolic links as their UEFI bootloaders (such as Mint 21.3)
• Add support for GRUB 2.12
• Fix a crash when saving .ffu images
• Fix UEFI:NTFS partition not being added, in MBR mode, for some Linux ISOs
• Prevent Microsoft Dev Drives from being listed [https://github.com/pbatard/issues/2395] (this likely means nothing to Rufus 7)
• Improve support for SDXC card readers
• Improve Large FAT32 formatting by aligning start of data regions to 1 MB (courtesy of Fred) [https://github.com/pbatard/pull/2387]
  As usual, rufus_x86 is the 32-bit release, while rufus is the 64-bit release.

Rufus 4.3

Add support for symbolic link preservation when NTFS is used
Add an exception to enforce NTFS for Linux Mint's LMDE
Add an expert feature to restrict a Windows installation to S Mode
Fix persistence support for Debian 12 in BIOS mode
Fix a regression that prevented the opening of .vhd images (pbatard#2309)
Update UEFI:NTFS to report a more explicit error on bootmgr security issues
Improve the search for conflicting processes, by running it in a background thread
Improve support for Slax Linux (pbatard#2336)

Rufus 4.2

Add detection and warning for UEFI revoked bootloaders (including ones revoked through SkuSiPolicy.p7b) (https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/2244)
Add ZIP64 support, to extract .zip images that are larger than 4 GB (https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/2264)
Add saving and restoring current drive to/from compressed VHDX image
Add saving and restoring current drive to/from compressed FFU ([Full Flash Update](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/deploy-windows-using-full-flash-update--ffu)) image [EXPERIMENTAL]
Fix a crash when trying to open Windows ISOs, with the MinGW compiled x86 32-bit version (https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/2272)
Fix an issue where ISOs that contain a boot image with an EFI label are not detected as bootable (https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/2288)
Increase the ISO → ESP limit for Debian 12 netinst images
Ensure that the main partition size is aligned to the cluster size

Rufus 4.2-BETA

(Pulled from 4.1)

  * Add timeouts on enumeration queries that may stall on some systems
  * Restore MS-DOS drive creation through the download of binaries from Microsoft
  * Update the log button icon
  * Fix UEFI:NTFS incompatibility with Windows Dev Kit 2023 platform (https://github.com/pbatard/uefi-ntfs/issues/37)
  * Fix more GRUB out of range pointer errors with Ubuntu/Fedora when booting in BIOS mode

Rufus 4.0

Fix persistent partition not working with Ubuntu 23.04 (pbatard#2231)
Fix out of range pointer error with Ubuntu 23.04 when booting in BIOS mode (pbatard#2233)
Fix boot freeze with Ubuntu Studio when Secure Boot is enabled (pbatard#2210)
Fix incorrect architecture detection when checking for updates
Fix a Windows Store application crash when processing GRUB bootloaders
Fix a Windows Store application crash when enumerating processes that contain a % sign
Fix a Windows Store application crash when using German localization
Note that the major version was bumped on account of:
New versions of Rufus requiring Windows 8 or later (doesn't apply here)
New versions of Rufus defaulting to a 64-bit executable
Old versions of Rufus potentially not being able to update properly

Built locally by cloning my own repository and building with VS2022. Tested by making a FreeDOS USB through VMware.