Version history for Eraser (32-bit)

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Changes for v6.2.0.2978 - v6.2.0.2979

• Changes to installer - adding MFC Runtimes

Changes for v6.1.0.1891 Beta - v6.1.0.1937 Beta

Changes for v6.0.8.2273 - v6.0.9.2343

• Fixed documentation errors when adding new tasks
• Fixed fatal errors when erasing files which the current user do not have access to
• Fixed updater with the change in server
• Fixed bug in monthly schedules
• Implementation suggestion by Jackjack that the title of balloon tips should be "Task Completed" and not "Task Executed" for clarity
• Document working around UAC to erase unused disk space.
• Fixed bug in scheduler where tasks will only be run once per Eraser start up even if the schedule should have been triggered
• Fixed memory leak when the Unlocker feature was enabled.
• Fixed some cases where file unlocking would still not allow a file to be unlocked for erasure.
• Fixed a situation where by a task would be initiated from the Explorer context menu and when Eraser was not running. Under some situations, the task will run but the UI will not reflect that.
• Fixed a crash when using the Unlocker code from Windows Vista.

Changes for v6.0.7.1893 - v6.0.8.2273

• 1933-1934 Fixed Eraser icon badge to reflect correct version Joel
• 1936, 1942 Initial Polish translation for Eraser Rudzik
• 1940 Fixed Donation link in About dialog Joel
• 1945 Fixed improper exit from Eraser when the instance was started by the system Joel
• 1946 Fixed documentation error: missing description of the Unused Disk Space target Joel
• 1948, 2225 When erasing shortcuts, erase the shortcut and not the target of the shortcut Joel
• 1951 Fixed compatibility for drag & drop with Total Commander (and older programs) Joel
• 1966 Fixed non-saving of schedule type when editing a task Joel
• 1968 Fixed status error when editing adding a new task when one is already running Joel
• 1689 The MSI installer will no longer check for the .NET Framework, only the Bootstrapper will Joel
• 2014 Fixed "File in Use" errors when plausible deniability is selected (decoy files) Joel
• 2080 Supplants a fix in Eraser 6.0.6: the amount of data that needed to be overwritten was underreported Joel
• 2139 Fixed crash on certain computers with unusual drive configurations Joel
• 2146, 2176 Fixed erasing of UNC paths: Eraser would previously refuse to erase UNC paths. However, use this feature at your own risk: UNC paths behave differently from disk erasures and data may not be completely erased. Joel
• 2158 Fix the (wrong) file name reported when erasing cluster tips Joel
• 2166 Better filesystem access permissions resilience when erasing cluster tips Joel
• 2168, 2172, 2182 Fix crash when a disk is connected but not mounted Joel
• 2215 Do not display the Eraser context menu for the Start button Joel
• 2249, 2251, 2252, 2270 Fixed the "out of disk space" error when erasing unused disk space Joel
• 2253 Fixed compatibility with Magellan Explorer on pre-Vista OSes Joel
• 2255 Fixed a few minor documentation errors on task list compatibility and on NTFS compressed/encrypted/sparse files Joel
• 2257 Fixed display of task schedule times to be accurate only to one minute Joel
• 2259 Removed the Gutmann Lite method Joel
• 2261 Fixed crash when right-clicking empty spaces in folders Joel
• 2263, 2265 Fixed the "Eraser cannot connect to the running instance for erasures" error when triggering Eraser from the context menu and when Eraser is not already running Joel
• 2264 API change: task.Executing is now false when the TaskFinished event handlers are called

Changes for v6.0.6.1376 - v6.0.7.1893

• Changelog
• Revision Description Author
• 1385-1386 Updated a few missing Italian localisation resources Andrea
• 1428 Fixed crash on startup for certain computers Joel
• 1431 Use proper font handling for menus during theming. Joel
• 1438-1440, 1471 Made improvements to the progress handling of NTFS' handling of unused directory entry erasures Joel
• 1443-1444 Stricter .NET framework version check, including that of service packs. Joel
• 1446 Don't allow automatically-loaded plugins to be automatically-loaded forever (security fix) Joel
• 1457 Unauthorised file access messages during cluster tip erasures have been downgraded from error to information. Joel
• 1465 Fixed potential blank context menu items in certain locales and locations in the shell Joel
• 1467 Better error handling when cleaning up erased files and folders Joel
• 1473 Fixes bug #286: Random errors when erasing cluster tips due to SfcIsFileProtected Joel
• 1475-1478, 1484, 1487-1488, 1491-1493 Fixes bug #285: Multiple custom method editor bugfixes Joel
• 1479-1480, 1482 Fixes multiple localisation issues for users who do not use English builds of Windows and for which no localisation is currently available Joel
• 1481 Better error message when loading settings fail. Joel
• 1483, 1484 Prevent a stack overflow when a user picks the FL16KB erasure method recursively as the chained erasure method. Joel
• 1486 Fixed updating from the Eraser website when we use download IDs Joel
• 1490 Fixed random crashes when using the Context menu to erase files/folders Joel
• 1494 Simplified removal of decoy files from the settings page Joel
• 1517 Fixed removal of plausible deniability decoys (#297) Joel
• 1633-1635 Fixed more crashes on startup. Joel
• 1637 Fixed crash when erasing files which do not exist. Joel
• 1639 Fixed race condition when two Eraser instances are started at the same time Joel
• 1641 Fixed crash when clicking on the About dialog, but the appropriate handler could not be executed. Joel
• 1643 Fixed crash when closing open handles for which filenames cannot be found. Joel
• 1649 Fixed crash when users erase the root of a drive Joel
• 1653 Fixed error when erasing files with plausible deniability enabled and having insufficient space on-disk. Joel
• 1659, 1740 Fixed crashes when progress events are triggered (due to their asynchronous nature) Joel
• 1663 Fixed cluster tip erasures when erasing the system drive: check both for existence of a directory as well as the ability to access it before throwing errors Joel
• 1664 Task log improvements, notably those which involve errors before logging used to start Joel
• 1666 Fixed inconsistent state of tasks which were edited and run immediately (potential crash) Joel
• 1669 Removed NtQuerySystemInformation entropy gathering, fixes freezing and BSoDs for most users Joel
• 1673 Better test for stream existence Joel
• 1693 Confirm with the user that dropped files should be erased. Fixes #306 Joel
• 1695 Implemented UNC path erasures (Fixes #313) Joel
• 1699 Fixed crash when unlocking file locked by a process with a higher permission level than Eraser Joel
• 1721, 1734, 1735 Fixed blank screen when starting Eraser with --quiet and then starting another Eraser instance (thanks to DavidHB for reporting this) Joel
• 1723 Managed/unmanaged call optimisation Joel
• 1729 Fixed handling of corrupt volumes when querying a volume for information Joel
• 1730 Fixed identification of drive types Joel
• 1732 Fixed crash for users when clicking on Add Data Joel
• 1737 Better enumeration of files which is more tolerant to files which are deleted during the erase process Joel
• 1738 Better handling of direcory reparse points and more efficient directory/file enumeration processes Joel
• 1742 Ensure the validity of decoy files before using them, fixing most exceptions during erasure when decoy files are enabled Joel
• 1752 Fixed crash when importing a corrupt/old task list. Joel
• 1754 Cleaner shutdown processes Joel
• 1782 Respect the Erase if Empty option when erasing directories Joel
• 1784 Allow a longer wait for the new Eraser instance to be spawned Joel
• 1821 Proper shut down when Hide when Minimised is enabled. Thanks to DavidHB for the report Joel
• 1824 Display errors when opening URLs fail instead of crashing Joel
• 1830 Fixed network statistics entropy gathering: wrong function order Joel
• 1846 Fixed exception when erasing cluster tips of files which were deeted during the enumeration process Joel
• 1851 Fixed command line parsing when commas and equality signs are in the filename Joel
• 1860 Fixed certain cannot delete file/folder errors when erasing files (due to invalid filenames being generated) Joel
• 1861 Handle locked files better when erasing files Joel
• 1883 Potential fix for insufficient disk space errors when doing free disk space erasures Joel
• 1885 When copying log entries use Windows line breaks Joel
• 1887 Fixed potential double exception when erasing cluster tips Joel
• 1892 Include the internal error when throwing an exception to indicate the inability to lock a volume Joel
• End of support for Eraser 5.x
• With this release, as announced earlier, support for Eraser 5 will be discontinued. Eraser developers will also not entertain requests to fix problems with the 5.x codebase, as it has reached the end of its useful life. v5 has served the community well, but the age of the code is already showing and the associated problems (of software incompatiblity) have been in recent years difficult (and expensive) to resolve.
• Eraser 5 will still be downloadable from SourceForge, and patches can still be submitted (but may not be applied), however no more official builds will be made available in future and support on the official channels (e.g. Support Forum and Trac) for Eraser 5 will cease. 5.8.8 will be the last officially released Eraser 5 version from The Eraser Project.
• Download/Hashes
• It is important to note that users downgrading from 6.1 should delete their Task Lists (%APPDATA%\Eraser 6\Task List.ersx) before running Eraser 6.0.x as that will result in a crash of 6.0.x builds. If you are upgrading from an earlier 6.0.x build, and especially if you have defined custom erasure methods or Plausible Deniability files, if upon upgrading Eraser refuses to start after the upgrade you can try deleting the task list (the same file as mentioned earlier) and if that fails, the HKCU\Software\Eraser\Eraser6 registry key. Deleting the latter will result in a reset of the Eraser settings to defaults.

Changes for v6.0.5.1114 RC5 - v6.0.6.1376

• Eraser 6 stable has been released after being for 2 years in development. Eraser 6 sports a completely revamped user interface, and Windows XP/Vista/7 support out of the box. Eraser 6 now allows users to use the context menu in Windows Explorer to erase Unused Space on drives with UAC on under Windows Vista and 7. The On-Demand and Scheduler panes in Eraser 5 has been replaced with the integrated Task Scheduler in Eraser 6 which allows for simplified management of tasks. The biggest and most significant change since rc5 is the addition of FAT directory cleaning and various usability improvements.
• Changelog
• Revision Description Author
• 1130 Progress dialog improvements Joel
• 1131 Deal with cluster tip erasure failures more robustly
• When a user does a folder erasure, delete all empty subfolders of the target if they are empty after the erase regardless of whether the folder should be deleted when empty Joel
• 1132 Fixed the crash which appears after Erase has been running for a while Joel
• 1133 Create a Hide button for the progress dialog
• Relabelled tab order for the progress dialog Joel
• 1136 Friendlier error message used when access is denied erasing a file cluster tip. Joel
• 1137 Moved the task list to a file in the Local Application Data folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Eraser 6) Joel
• 1138 Allow users to filter log messages by severity Joel
• 1139 Fixed crash when "unformatted" drives are installed on the computer. Thanks to Xanashi for reporting the bug. Joel
• 1140, 1145 Clean up files meant for cleaning up the MFT after we are done with it. Thanks to mcmaster76 for reporting the bug. Joel
• 1143, 1147 Log viewer performance optimisations Joel
• 1144 Specify the minimum size of the log viewer so that the dialog will remain useable. Joel
• 1148 Fixed a crash when right-clicking a drive in the Computer folder. Thanks to mcmaster76 for reporting the bug. Joel
• 1154 Fixed restart-run tasks. Joel
• 1158 Made the forced closure of file handles optional Joel
• 1159 Added first draft of the Eraser documentation Joel
• 1163, 1164 Allow eraser to be called from the Run dialog Joel
• 1165, 1166 Created a new type of task - Manual tasks which run only on demand. The distinction between manual and run-once tasks are that tasks meant to run only once will be run and if it completes successfully the task will be deleted. Manually run tasks will never be automatically deleted. Joel
• 1185 Fixed crash when erasing FAT file systems. Joel
• 1186 Certain file names which could not be erased from the context menu previously can now be erased. Joel
• 1187 Allow computers without network adapters to run Eraser Joel
• 1188 Disk performance counters can now be used as an entropy source Joel
• 1193 Cleaner NTFS MFT erasure. Joel
• 1195 When deleting folders reset all the access modified and creation times. Joel
• 1206, 1207, 1211, 1214, 1215, 1219-1222, 1225-1236, 1239, 1242 Implemented FAT cleaning Joel
• 1243 Implemented delete key in the Scheduler. Thanks to Xanashi for suggesting! Joel
• 1247 Updated the Visual C++ runtime to the latest one (2008SP1 with ATL security fix) This fixes hangs when using the Eraser context menu. Joel
• 1278 Installer bootstrapper improvements Joel
• 1285 Do not stop running a task if one target does not exist. Joel
• 1287, 1288 NTFS MFT Cleaning improvements. Joel
• 1296 Allow many files to be dragged into the Eraser Window. Joel
• 1297 Erase MFT resident files before expanding the file to clear the cluster. This makes sure MFT resident files do not move around the MFT. Joel
• 1299 When selecting too many files to erase from the Eraser context menu in Windows Explorer display a helpful error message instead of failing without any reason. Joel
• 1304 Fixed Eraser being unable to exit when started at logon. Joel
• 1317 Allow an elevated instance of Eraser to be controlled remotely by the same user. This allows the user to use the context menu extension even when Eraser is running as an Administrator. Joel
• 1318 Fixed crash when deleting multiple tasks Joel
• 1320 Added Italian localisation support Joel
• 1321 Compile Warning fixes Joel
• 1323 Don't check the SFC filelist if the given path name is longer than 255 characters Joel
• 1324-1341 Implemented Italian localisation Andrea
• 1342, 1348, 1350 Fixed build process for developers without code signing certificates Joel
• 1343 Rearranged the Italian settings panel to fit longer strings Joel
• 1344-1347 More Italian localisation work Andrea
• 1353 Display the language name in the .NET framework language for all Eraser translations for uniformity Joel
• 1354 Display untranslated strings in debug builds as "untranslated" but use the English string in release builds Joel
• 1355 Fixed updater crash Joel
• 1365-1368, 1373 More Italian localisation work; added support for Shell Extension translations Andrea
• 1369-1372 Implemented Shell Extension translation switching (controlled from the Eraser Settings page) Joel
• Retirement of Eraser 5
• This release of Eraser brings about sad news for some - Eraser 5 support will end after the release of Eraser 6.0.7. Technically, since this Eraser build is the 6th release of the version 6 this is Eraser 6.0.6. Thus, the next release of Eraser will see the end of Eraser 5 support. This is mainly to ensure that critical bugs within Eraser 6 are fixed before Eraser 5 is retired.
• The reason for not supporting the old code is that the old code was not designed to run on the operating systems of today and functions do not work as expected. Eraser 6 was redesigned to ensure that it will match the coding standards and fit into the software ecosystem like any other "modern" application.

Changes for v6.0.3.847 RC3 - v6.0.4.875 RC4

• 850 Empty recycle bin after we are done with erasures so the icon is updated. Joel
• 850 Erase only the recycle bin for the current user Joel
• 851 Don't show secure move entry (currently unimplemented) Joel
• 852 Fixed grammatical error in about text Joel
• 853 About dialog links to our new site Joel
• 854 Allow users to create new tasks by right-clicking empty portions of the scheduler Joel
• 854 Removed unused entries from the Scheduler toolbar menu Joel
• 855 Folders in the plausible deniability list are now properly utilised Joel
• 856 Faster about box drawing algorithm Joel
• 858-859 Allow one-time tasks to be automatically removed upon successful completion Joel
• 859 Fixed another grammatical error in the scheduler Joel
• 860 Fixed the bootstrapper for 64-bit architectures. Also fixes the Shell extension for 64-bit Windows Joel
• 861-862 Fixed Vista shell extension icons. We lost the alpha channel using the old conversion method Joel
• 863 Task deletions will now require user confirmation (as per Windows and v5) Joel
• 864 Inform the user that there are no updates or plugins to download when the user invokes the updater Joel
• 865 Don't allow the user to select invalid folder paths, eg. the Printers folder in remote network shares Joel
• 866 Fixed spurious crash upon adding tasks using the shell extension Joel
• 867 Implemented automatic elevation when unused free space erasures are requested from the shell extension. A quick note: what this does is the request for unused space erasures automatically elevate themselves. However, since the erasures are still done by the running Eraser instance which may not have been elevated, the erasures may still fail. The behaviour is however different when there is no Eraser instance running: the spawned instance of Eraser will automatically be elevated. Joel
• 868 Show an error message when the user cancels the elevation request, instead of throwing out an "unknown error" Joel
• 870 All binaries are now timestamped on top of being signed Joel
• 871 Error codes should be better dealt with now, we use the Marshaler which is built into .NET for error handling

Changes for v5.86a - v6.0.3.847 RC3

• Bootstrapper to redraw the progress window after it has been created Joel
• Include Visual Studio 2008 C++ Runtimes for the Shell extension (fixes the shell extension not working for quite a few people) Joel
• Fixed the shutdown check for XP users: Eraser will prevent shutdown of the computer when it is running Joel
• Fixed a few typos Joel
• Install button in the Updater only enabled when updates are selected Joel
• Fixed Eraser startup crash in 64bit Joel
• Fixed monthly schedules Joel
• Allow the system to go to sleep when the erasure task is complete Joel
• Implemented plugin signature verification using the native Authenticode API's

Changes for v5.8.8 Beta 1 - v5.8.8

• Eraser 5.8.8 is released. This release is mainly meant to fix the disk corruption which results from running a first/last 2KB erase on a sparse file as well as to fix the context menu causing Explorer to hang when installed with certain software which also inserts a context menu item.
• Do note that the Eraser 5.x series will be retired (i.e. unmaintained) after the release of Eraser 6.0.7. See complete details in the Eraser 6 announcement.
• Changelog
• Revision Description Author
• 1149 Do not erase sparse, compressed or encrypted files when FL2KB erasure is selected to prevent disk corruption. Joel
• 1150 Fix Win32 Eraser builds to be truly Unicode builds. Joel
• 1169 A few 64-bit fixes. Joel
• 1168 Ensure that Eraser uses the latest runtimes packaged with the installer. This should fix hangs when using the Context menu. Joel
• 1184 Fixed the About dialog after migrating to Unicode Joel
• 1279 Sign all binaries packaged with the installer Joel
• 1292 Allow erasing UNC paths Joel
• 1293 Fixed memory exhaustion when doing a free space erase for FAT drives Joel
• 1294 Migrate non-Unicode custom erasure methods to the Unicode methods so that old custom erasure methods are preserved upon upgrade Joel
• 1305 Ensure that Eraser is not running when the Eraser setup is run Joel

Changes for v5.8.7 - v5.8.8 Beta 1

• Do not erase sparse, compressed or encrypted files when FL2KB erasure is selected to prevent disk corruption.
• Fix Win32 Eraser builds to be truly Unicode builds.
• A few 64-bit fixes.
• Ensure that Eraser uses the latest runtimes packaged with the installer. This should fix hangs when using the Context menu.

Changes for v5.86a - v5.8.7

• Allow users to specify whether they want to delete Eraser-related configuration files on uninstall
• Implemented Eraser 5 Unicode support.

Changes for v5.86 - v5.86a

Changes for v5.84 - v5.85

• Maintenance Release

Changes for v6.1.0.2284 Beta - v6.0.10.2620

• Updated Italian translation
• Updated LZMA SDK for Bootstrapper to use the beta 9.22 SDK which is the only one available from 7-zip
• Improved Recycle Bin support for non-NTFS drives on Windows
• Fixed Scheduler display bug where tasks added using the Shell Context Menu could appear in the schedule as Not Queued even if it was configured to run automatically, if a task was already running
• Fixed dereferencing of non-volume reparse points. Erasing files in earlier versions when a reparse point was in a path could cause Eraser to refuse erasing the file
• Disable all entropy mixing algorithms except SHA-1 so that Eraser can continue to function even when FIPS mode is enabled under Windows XP

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