2020 History

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Version 2.2.1.0        December 31, 2020




Improved the EFI partition allocation routines.



Minor enhancements to the diagnostics routines.






Version 2.2.0.9        December 26, 2020




I have established a Grub2Win support server.

Diagnostic files can now be uploaded to the server if desired.



Upload of diagnostic files is optional. The choice is yours.

You can either upload or email the diagnostic files to me.  



Improved detection of EFI partitions on flash drives.



Minor enhancements to the diagnostics routines.






Version 2.2.0.8        December 8, 2020





Minor enhancements to the GUI and setup routines.






Version 2.2.0.7        November 30, 2020





Improved BCD error detection.


Minor improvements to the setup routines.


Help file updates concerning BCD errors.






Version 2.2.0.6        November 19, 2020





Windows scaling for high resolution displays has been improved.






Version 2.2.0.5        October 30, 2020





Added a closing message to Fedora and Manjaro users.

Information on the required kernset.sh script is displayed.



Minor fixes and updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.2.0.4        October 20, 2020





Non EFI files can now be chainloaded as well as EFI files.


Improved the Windows temp storage cleanup routines.


Minor fixes and updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.2.0.3        October 15, 2020





Cleaned up an error in the EFI setup script.


Your EFI partition modules will be updated to level 146.


Minor fixes and updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.2.0.2        October 7, 2020





Enhancements to the BCD diagnostic routines.


Improvements to firmware mode detection.


The partition list now identifies the Windows EFI partition.






Version 2.2.0.1        October 3, 2020





The EFI letter assignment routines have been enhanced.

This speeds up EFI access on systems with a single EFI partition.


Minor updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.2.0.0        September 27, 2020





** This is a major release of Grub2Win. **


Some background:


Much EFI firmware written before 2015 does not comply with EFI standards.


There has been an ongoing problem with these older systems.

The Grub2Win EFI manager was ignored by the EFI firmware.

Windows would boot no matter what.


This has been quite frustrating for the users.


The Grub2Win EFI firmware sequence routines have been extensively rewritten.


These changes should make Grub2Win less vulnerable to firmware issues.



******************************************************************



Please note:


The anticipated release of GNU Grub 2.06 has been delayed until later this year.


Grub2Win will continue using GNU Grub 2.04 custom kernels for the time being.






Version 2.1.5.4        September 23, 2020





Minor updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.1.5.3        September 15, 2020





Expanded the menu title field from 50 characters to 80 characters.

This will allow longer titles and reduce duplicate titles.


Allow most special characters to be used in menu titles.

The following characters are still not allowed


        \   /   :   *   ?   $   &   "   >   <   |  '   }   {


This is due to Windows file name and parsing restrictions.


Note: Once you use menu titles with special characters or longer names,

you cannot return to Grub2Win releases earlier than 2.1.5.3.


Fixed a bug in the submenu generation code.






Version 2.1.5.2        September 9, 2020





Corrected an error in the Grub2Win cleanup routines.

Setup files were not always removed from the Windows Temp directory.


Minor updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.1.5.1        September 4, 2020





Corrected a rarely occurring error in the EFI setup routines.


Updates to the help file to provide more EFI partition information.


Your EFI partition modules will be updated to level 145.




Refreshed Clover to level 5122.






Version 2.1.5.0        August 25, 2020





A secondary uninstall bat script is now included.

This can be used if the normal Windows uninstall is not available.


Fixed an undefined variable error in the firmware display routine.


Minor updates to the GUI and help files.




Refreshed Clover to level 5121.






Version 2.1.4.9        August 9, 2020





Enhanced the 7Zip compression and decompression routines.

These are called by the Update, Clover and Diagnostics functions.


Minor updates to the GUI and help files.


Added a warning concerning the obsolete “getbootpartition” function.

The newer “getpartition” function should be used instead.

The old “getbootpartition” function will be removed December 31, 2020.


Your EFI partition modules will be updated to level 144.






Version 2.1.4.8        August 2, 2020





Fixed a rarely occurring error in the EFI letter assignment routines.






Version 2.1.4.7        July 29, 2020





Refined the EFI update routines for Clover.


Added a warning message if the EFI firmware year is earlier then 2015.


Minor updates to the GUI.






Version 2.1.4.6        July 19, 2020





Grub2Win will now issue an error message when it

detects a badly formatted EFI partition.


The invalid EFI partition is then ignored.




Removed the “Uninstall” button from the main menu.


The standard Windows Control Panel is now used to uninstall Grub2Win.




Refreshed Clover to level 5120.






Version 2.1.4.5        July 5, 2020





Corrected an error in the menu item delete routine.


Minor updates to the GUI.






Version 2.1.4.4        June 29, 2020





Enhanced the EFI vs BIOS detection routines for greater reliability.






Version 2.1.4.3        June 25, 2020





Minor enhancements to the setup program.






Version 2.1.4.2        June 22, 2020





Enhancements to the update and version tracking routines.






Version 2.1.4.1        June 18, 2020





Enhancements to the user section and version tracking routines.


Added three new FreeBSD partition types to the partition scan routines.


Minor updates to the GUI.






Version 2.1.4.0        June 13, 2020





Expanded the diagnostic error description input area.


Minor updates to the GUI.






Version 2.1.3.9        June 10, 2020





Added support for PhoenixOS automatic code generation.


Enhanced Manjaro microcode load in the initrd command.


Minor updates to the GUI.




Refreshed Clover to level 5119.






Version 2.1.3.8        May 28, 2020





Added a check for firmware written before 2014.

Old firmware sometimes causes errors when performing EFI operations.



Minor updates to the GUI.






Version 2.1.3.7        May 24, 2020





Added a theme option to vertically center the menu entries on the boot screen.



Minor updates to the syntax scanner and GUI.




Refreshed Clover to level 5118.






Version 2.1.3.6        May 19, 2020





Improved USB flash drive support in the GNU Grub kernel.

Your EFI modules will be refreshed to level 143.



Fixed an array error in the setup program.



Minor updates to the GUI.






Version 2.1.3.5        May 12, 2020





Minor updates to the GUI.




Refreshed Clover to level 5117.






Version 2.1.3.4        May 6, 2020





Improvements to the option that forces EFI firmware to load Grub2Win as the default boot manager.


Sometimes Microsoft or Linux software updates alter the default EFI boot manager.

This is particularly true for machines with EFI firmware written before 2016.


The Grub2Win force option has been enhanced to prevent this problem in most cases.






Version 2.1.3.3        April 30, 2020





Minor updates to the GUI and help files.




Refreshed Clover to level 5115.






Version 2.1.3.2        March 10, 2020





Enhanced the syntax check routines to honor the “ \”

character string for splitting lines.



Minor updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.1.3.1        February 25, 2020





Added an Import function for external .cfg files created in Linux by GNU Grub version 2.


The Import function reads GNU Grub configuration files copied from your Linux partitions.


The Linux configuration is used to construct bootable Grub2Win menu entry code.


This is useful for distributions that are not supported for automatic code generation by Grub2Win.




Added a Grub2Win shortcut to the Windows start menu.


Removed nomodeset as a default Linux parm. This should improve the video resolution for most modern video chips.


Minor updates to the GUI and help files.




Refreshed Clover to level 5104.






Version 2.1.3.0        January 21, 2020





Fixed a problem that sometimes prevented the scrollbar from displaying.


Enhanced the disk scan routines for better detection of Linux partitions.



Minor updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.1.2.9        January 14, 2020





Enhanced the boot time search for the vmlinuz kernel file.


Some recent Linux distributions have changed the location of the vmlinuz file.




Your Grub2Win EFI partition modules will be updated to level 142.






Version 2.1.2.8        January 11, 2020





Added an option to disable NTFS kernel file checking for Android menu entries.


This is needed when Grub2Win cannot find the kernel file on any NTFS file system.


Grub2Win cannot verify the kernel when it is on a Linux ext file system.




Minor updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.1.2.7        January 9, 2020





Established a user file to add up to five additional graphics resolution selections.




The ** Auto ** graphics resolution setting has been stabilized.

It is now permanently set to:


“1600x1200,1280x1024,1152x864,1024x768,800x600"




Minor updates to the GUI and help files to reflect these changes.




Refreshed Clover to level 5103.






Version 2.1.2.6        January 7, 2020





My SSL code signing certificate has been successfully renewed for two more years.



Renamed the XP boot modules to be more consistent and avoid confusion.



Minor updates to the GUI and help files.






Version 2.1.2.5        January 6, 2020





Rearranged the GNU Grub boot menu to vertically center the boot menu entries.


This required more screen real estate, too large for 800x600 resolution screens.


When the Grub graphics mode is set to 800x600, there will be no option to select a graphics screen theme.

The theme will automatically be set to character mode only.




Refreshed Clover to level 5102.







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