Rufus 4.1 restores some missing features, adds improved compatibility

Pete Batard, developer of the popular third-party tool Rufus, has released a new update with several improvements. Version 4.1 is now available for download from GitHub with improved compatibility with the Windows Dev Kit 2023 platform and some previously missing features, such as MS-DOS drive creation using binaries from Microsoft.

Here are the release notes for Rufus 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 (pbatard/uefi-ntfs#37)

• Fix more GRUB out of range pointer errors with Ubuntu/Fedora when booting in BIOS mode

You can download Rufus 4.1 from Neowin, the official website, GitHub, or the Microsoft Store. Rufus is fully open-source, so enthusiasts with the necessary skills can contribute to the project's development on GitHub.

For those unfamiliar, Rufus is a small app that lets you create bootable USB drives with Windows, Linux, and other operating systems. In addition to its primary feature, the program allows downloading ISO files directly from Microsoft, which makes Rufus your all-in-one program for clean-installing and servicing operating systems on various PCs.

It also has a few extra aces up its sleeve, such as removing system requirements for Windows 11 (TPM, SecureBoot, UEFI, 4GB of RAM, etc.), creating a local account, disabling BitLocker, flashing BIOS or other firmware from DOS, and more.

You can use Rufus on any PC running Windows 8 and newer (installable, portable, x86, x64, and ARM64). Windows 7, unfortunately, is no longer supported—the OS was dropped in version 4.0, released in late April 2023. However, Rufus can still make Windows 7-based bootable USB drives, assuming the app runs on a more modern Windows version. Check out our guide showing how to create bootable USB drives using Rufus.

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