IsoBuster 3.8 early Beta Released!

I decided to do a little experiment and release a beta version earlier than I normally do. Even though I make sure the final versions I release are working optimally, from time to time a bug slips in, due to rewrites and additions. Over the years the program has become so complex that it is unavoidable I suppose. However I'd rather catch these issues in a beta version and for that I need your help ! So please, by all means, download this version and use it like you normally would. It is a stable version. I think by now you know that IsoBuster has always been very stable working software. But if something is off, please let me know.

Since this is an early beta you should also know that I plan to add more functionality before the final release, which is typically in the middle of the year (Probably June). So this page will be amended from time to time as I implement new functionality or make further improvements and fix bugs. When you don't hear from me, I'm working on deep down engine functionality that takes more time and doesn't immediately translate into a fancy new feature. So, come back from time to time to check it out.

Here's a list of what I have been working on:

Changes / New:

• Overhaul of all visual aspects of the software to improve things for the visually impaired, for instance high contrast mode works optimally now
• Overhaul of all visual aspects of the software to improve scaling (larger than default fonts - still with limits)
• Overhaul of all visual aspects of the software to improve and fix Right-to-Left reading where appropriate
• The use of 32 bit + Alpha channel icons throughout the software (Sorry Win2K users)
• Load and use system icons when appropriate (e.g. Help, Information, Exclamation etc.)
• Support for *.vhd Fixed, Dynamic and Differencing Virtual Disk Images
• Support for *.vhdx Fixed, Dynamic and Differencing Virtual Disk Images
• Support for *.vdi Fixed, Dynamic and Differencing Virtual Disk Images
• Full support for 4Kn drives (drives with 4096 bytes per logical sector)
• Browse back and forth between earlier made selections
• Complete IBP/IBQ managed image files 'on demand' as sectors are required and read. Requires a [Professional] license
• Show streams, attached to files or folders, via right mouse click selection
• Show extents of folders, very much the same like on fragmented files

Improvements:

• Show Hint text when hovering over Details, List and Small Icons buttons on the main form
• Improved ancient annoyance where the StatusBar text/hint when hovering over a TreeNode or selecting a ListNode would disappear again immediately
• IsoBuster gets focus again when selected via the task bar and when the properties window is showing
• Improved the location of the right mouse click popup, so that it now appears more inline with what Windows does
• Improved things so that both percent labels on the progress dialog get updated when 2 progress bars are showing
• Ability to resize the device-selection combo-box in the top left corner and option to keep the combo-box and tree-view under it at the same width
• Search dialog and Options/Settings dialog resizing by the user
• Show Video icon next to "Extract but filter MPEG frames" where it is almost certainly appropriate and make the entry default (bold) to hopefully steer the user in the right direction
• Improved the right mouse click popup on a properties window
• Show red error icon next to building lists of erroneous sectors (single objects only, not folders)
• Default saving disk fragments (From-To) and partitions etc. to file extension *.dsk instead of *.img for better loading support (*.img can also be optical)
• Do not show the File/Folder Search option in case the folder has been expanded already and proves to be empty
• Add Application and Version information in CUE file
• When closing the tray, do not show an error message anymore when the error is illegal field in CDB (05/24/00) or related, because laptops etc. don't support closing and report this with an illegal field in CDB.
• Don't even suggest to complete an IBP/IBQ file if there are no other devices other than the IBP/IBQ itself (e.g. no devices found or finding devices disabled and no other image files loaded)
• Fomat large numbers with dots or commas (depending on Windows settings) on more locations
• Dialogs that take addresses and sizes as input, now allow the input to be formatted with commas and dots
• The breadcrumbs control uses the same icons as shown in the treeview control, based on settings
• Seriously improved the look and feel of the breadcrumbs control for Windows XP and High Contrast mode
• The about box has a fresh new look and hopefully helps with the confusion between PRO - [Personal] and [professional] licenses
• "@open:" opens the Open Image file dialog, "@open:\c:\y\z\w.xyz" opens file: "c:\y\z\w.xyz"
• Command: @show:\extents or @show:\streams or @show:\resourcefork
• Added Ctrl+BackSpace shortcut to trigger the Breadcrumbs Edit function
• Added Ctrl+Shift+Q shortcut to start the IBP/IBQ Manager -or- EWF Properties (depending on the image file that is loaded)
• Added Ctrl+Shift+R shortcut to 'run' a file
• Added F8 shortcut to bring up the Options/Settings dialog
• Improve the workings of Ctrl+Shift+M to either create or complete an image file, making sure they don't conflict
• Esc closes the From-To Dialog, the IBP/IBQ Manager, the About window, Properties and the file edit dialog
• Improved building the previously opened image file's list and make sure a separator is not drawn as a thick line
• Make sure there are tab characters between text and shortcut, in popup menus, to keep it all readable
• Also support reverse reading when filling gaps
• Also support reverse reading of tracks in their session (last track first)
• Improved Buttons' height in Toolbar (Up, Details, List, Icons, ...)
• Improvements in the navigation bar, support for '..', '\' etc.
• Show "Extracting Name-of-?" instead of "Extracting CD" when extracting a non-optical disk to a folder containing its partitions
• Auto-Save managed IBP/IBQ image file making every 5 / 10 minutes, depending
• A few improvements, changes and re-writes in the core code / engine, as this is a living project and to deal with the ever growing new functionality
• Various other, not listed, GUI improvements

Fixes:

• Fixed improper updating of the *.IBP, Managed Image File, after the reverse reading feature had been used
• Showing the previous search results, initiated via the search dialog did not work properly
• Ctrl+C would not always work in other windows than the main window (e.g. Sector View), because the main window would 'steal' the input
• Made changes to the breadcrumbs control, so that IsoBuster now runs on Windows 2000 (Win2K) again
• Several improvements parsing NTFS to deal with illegal values, especially during a scan for missing or deleted files/folders, to avoid exception errors
• Fixed an exception error when opening a CUE that points to multiple files but more than one of those files are not available
• Fixed a serious and possible data corruption issue with NTFS for large + fragmented files, on extraction to HD or elsewhere, because the offset in the first block would be wrong
• Fixed a data corruption issue with NTFS for files that fit in the $MFT records, but only on 4Kn drives, so drives that have 4096 bytes per block native and expose those blocks as such (so not 512e drives).

Please tell people about it, like it in FaceBook, share it via FaceBook or via Twitter, post it on forums etc. Stuff like that is really appreciated. Start with clicking the FaceBook "Like" button all the way below, in the bottom right corner.

Peter Van Hove,
Founder and CEO