alex's coding playground

USB Image Tool 1.59

Alex — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:45:12 +0000

This version fixes the error message in device mode, when restoring an image that is not a multiple of 512 Bytes. These images can now be written in device mode as well. The problem came up with the new Debian Image for the Raspberry Pi. Thanks to user zoltan for reporting that issue.

Update: Seems like I forgot to upload the new file. This should be fixed now.

Forum user rights fixed

Alex — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:04:04 +0000

Thanks to user Lewpy it came to my attention, that registered users couldn’t post in the new forum. For some reason registered users had fewer rights than newly registered users, which were disabled by default. All registered user should now be able to post new topics and replies as well.

USB Image Tool 1.58

Alex — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 17:58:00 +0000

Version 1.58 fixes a bug in the gzip image size check and the detail info of the command line tool. Additionally you can now activate a completion message after a successful backup/restore.

Update 1: Version 1.58 seems to have an issue with the usbit32.dll. I will look into this as soon as possible.

Update 2: Looks like the first version didn’t work on Windows XP machines. This should be fixed now. The version still remains 1.58.

New support forum

Alex — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 23:54:52 +0000

After struggling with all the disadvantages of bbPress and constantly broken permalinks I have decided to switch to phpBB3 for the new support forum. The link to the new forum is http://www.alexpage.de/forum/. The old forum will still be accessible for a while. I will move all relevant content to either the FAQ or the new forum. The rest including the old forum users will be deleted afterwards. For now the link to the old forum is http://www.alexpage.de/forums/forum.php?id=2.

USB Image Tool 1.57/1.56

Alex — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:39:35 +0000

The new version fixes some problems with the creation of large zip files by implementing new versions of zlib (1.2.5) and minizip (1.1). Additionally to version 1.56, it uses 64 bit functions for zip file handling. This should fix the issue with broken zip files. When working with zip files, updating to 1.57 is strongly recommended.

USB Image Tool 1.55

Alex — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:35:39 +0000

The new version fixes two technical issues. The first one is the error code 3 (“The system cannot find the path specified”), that occured when you tried to restore your backup image after using your flash drive with the atv patchstick creator. Windows couldn’t detect the volume on the flash drive, resulting in an empty volume path. Locking this path failed and resulted in the error. This should be fixed with this version.

The second fix prevents USB Image Tool from restoring invalid images in device mode. A valid device mode image has to be multiple of 512. If that’s not the case, the write operation will fail with error code 87 close to the end of the process. To prevent this, USB Image Tool now checks, if the image file size is a multiple of 512.

USB Image Tool support forum

Alex — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:27:41 +0000

Because it became more difficult to reply on feedback and error messages just by the WordPress comment function, I have setup a small forum for support questions. I would like you to ask questions there, because it’s easier to keep track of the issues there. Also please make sure that you check the FAQ first. You can find the forum here.

USB Image Tool 1.54

Alex — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:39:51 +0000

The new version allows shared read access on the source image file, when using the Restore function. With this it is possible to write the same image file to different flash drives from one instance of USB Image Tool (or different instances as well).

It also catches a strange exception, that seems to happen when clicking on a link in the GUI. In some cases Windows can’t open the browser when just passing a URL to execute. For some reason my workstation seems to be affected since I re-installed it before christmas. Couldn’t find a reason for that on the web, only some workarounds. If calling the URL directly fails, it uses IE now.

Bug reporting

Alex — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:00:58 +0000

Over the time I got plenty of feedback regarding USB Image Tool. Some of it were bug reports or questions about (at first) unexplainable program behaviour. While a lot of the feedback was well described so I could immidiately figure out, what the author meant, some were in the way “It doesn’t work! Why?”. After 10 years of professional software development and 15 years of programming at all, I can only recommend you reading this document: How to Report Bugs Effectively by Simon Tatham. It’s really worth the time, funny to read and will benefit bug reporter as well as programmer. So before you report something, I would like to ask you to read there first.

USB Image Tool 1.53

Alex — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:25:16 +0000

Version 1.53 comes with the new option to truncate oversize image files to write it to smaller flash drives. Before using this option, read the FAQ about the way it has to be done and be aware of the consequences if you do it without the method described. This definitely isn’t an “always-on” setting. The FAQ also adresses the “smaller image file on larger flash drive” and “changing partition size” questions, so please read there first.

Also it fixes some issues with the automatic file name generation (replaces “:” and “/” with “-”) and makes the device mode the default selection, when available (see FAQ as well).