Rufus, perhaps the most popular bootable USB media creation utility, has received a significant update with version 4.8. That's because there is a major shift toward faster and more efficient processing of Windows installation media by switching to wimlib for all Windows Imaging (WIM) handlings. The Rufus author says that the change has led to a significant improvement in speed when opening Windows ISOs, and this should be great for such users who tend to work with Windows installation files fairly regularly.
Rufus notes that Wimlib’s integration speeds up the Windows ISO processing, reducing waiting times during image analysis. This boost in speed is said to be particularly noticeable when creating Windows To Go drives, although if you have a "crap" drive, it is best not to expect "miracles".
For those wondering, Wimlib is an open source library for creating, extracting, and modifying Windows Imaging (WIM) archives, and it is cross platform too.
Another key update in Rufus 4.8 is the introduction of file splitting for files over 4GB using the Alt-E key, for managing larger installation files; however, performance gains in this area are still modest when compared to the UEFI:NTFS handling.
On the development side, Rufus 4.8 has moved exclusively to Visual Studio binaries. The full changelog is given below:
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Switch to wimlib for all WIM image processing:
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Greatly speeds up image analysis when opening Windows ISOs
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Can speed up Windows To Go drive creation
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Might help with Parallels limitations on Mac (But Rufus on Parallels is still unsupported)
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Enables the splitting of >4GB files with Alt-E (But still WAY SLOWER than using UEFI:NTFS)
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Switch to using Visual Studio binaries everywhere, due to MinGW DLL delay-loading limitations
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Add more exceptions for Linux ISOs that restrict themselves to DD mode (Nobara, openSUSE, ...)
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Improve reporting of UEFI bootloaders in the log, with info on the Secure Boot status
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Fix an issue with size limitations when writing an uncompressed VHD back to the same drive
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Fix a crash when opening the log with the 32-bit MinGW compiled version
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Fix commandline parameters not being forwarded to original Windows
setup.exe
To download Rufus 4.8, head over to Neowin software stories page. You can also download it from the official website or from its GitHub repo.
Update, June 16 2025, 7.00 GMT: Rufus has released an emergency "BUGFIX RELEASE" update with new version 4.9. This is essentially a hotfix as it resolves a WUE (Windows User Experience) dialog pop up issue for unofficial Windows ISOs in the case of single index WIM (Windows Image) files.
Aside from that, the update also fixes a server-related issue wherein users were not able the download the utility from Rufus' official website.
The changelog is given below:
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Fix downloads from https://rufus.ie no longer working due to recent GitHub server changes
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Fix unofficial Windows ISOs, with single index WIMs, not presenting the WUE dialog
You can grab the new update, head over to Neowin software stories page. You can also download it from the official website or from its GitHub repo.
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