| Author | Message | ||
     Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A new version of the viewer component (v8.1.6) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics with update maintenance. There were only few, small changes since the previous v8.1.5. For details please click here. Upgrading is optional. An older version of the viewer component (v8.0.2) for use under Windows 9x/Me is now available as a separate download. Before installing a different version of the viewer component by extracting/copying all files over a previous version, please exit X-Ways Forensics. If you point X-Ways Forensics to a different directory with a different version of the viewer component, please make sure that no file is currently being previewed/viewed and restart X-Ways Forensics after changing the directory. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A small preview package now allows to view MS Office 2007 documents. Available as a separate download to licensed users of X-Ways Forensics. If you are interested in testing this functionality, please simply add all files from that preview .zip archive to the viewer directory, just like you would add all files from the WinHex add-on .zip archive to the X-Ways Forensics directory if you wanted to run winhex.exe. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A new version of the viewer component (v8.1.9) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics with update maintenance. What's new? * Support for Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) has been officially added. * This release has been qualified on Windows Vista Ultimate. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The viewer component has been updated. Only 1 file has actually changed. This patch fixes an error that could occur with certain Visio (.vsd) documents. It is recommended to re-download and re-install the viewer component (only) if you would like to view Visio documents during your work or decode their text for the logical search or indexing. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
Fixes to be expected in a few weeks with v8.2 of the viewer component for the following issues, among others: * When printing a file and printing the path in the header line (%P), umlauts (öüä) and probably other codepage-dependent characters from other languages in the filename are not displayed correctly. (SRN 17813926.6) * Certain corrupt HTML files cause problems. The viewer component can display the top of the document, but then it freezes, and also freezes X-Ways Forensics. Problems analogously occur when decoding certain corrupt HTML files for logical searches or indexing. (SRN 17814064.6) * In certain .msg e-mail message files, the message body is not readable in the viewer component. There is a clickable link that opens a new window where the message text is displayed in black on a very dark blue background, hardly noticeable. The same files can be viewed normally in MS Outlook. (SRN 17811738.6) * The viewer component completely freezes when it tries to view certain (truncated or corrupt) OpenOffice documents. (SRN 17814182.6) * It is not possible to use the search functionality in the viewer component to find text with German umlauts (öüä) or other characters outside of 7-bit ASCII. This affects plain text files for whose display options the Windows (ANSI 1252) character set has been selected and special file types like MS Word documents. (SRN 17812838.6) | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The new version of the viewer component (v8.2) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics with update maintenance. The above-mentioned fixes were implemented, and there were feature additions as described here. Plus the display of pictures is now noticeably faster. Because of the fixes and improvements, installing this update is highly recommended. You simply extract the files to a directory of your choice and point X-Ways Forensics to that directory under Options | Viewer Programs. Another important change if you use X-Ways Forensics and the viewer component on live machines is that the viewer component now stores its configuration/settings in the Windows profile (\Application Data\.oit) of the logged-on user instead of in the Windows system registry. Another notable fix not mentioned before concerns certain .eml e-mail message files based on certain code pages (like Japanese iso-2022-jp), that previously could not be viewed correctly. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
Caveats regarding v8.2 of the viewer component: * This version requires msvcr80.dll from the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package. This package can be downloaded from here (2.6 MB). On many Windows computers it seems to be installed already, under C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_*. On other Windows computers you need to install it before you are able to use v8.2 of the viewer component. * It turned out that some rare files that could be viewed normally in v8.1.9 now cannot be viewed any more in v8.2 and may provoke an exception error in X-Ways Forensics (type 207). I was unable to figure out myself what is wrong, have informed Oracle, will post here again when there is something new to report. For the time being, because of the above, I do not highly recommended this update any more. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
Just for everyone's information, Oracle apparently has made some progress on this issue. I'm hopeful that we will receive a patch some time, whose availability would render v8.2 a highly recommended update again. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The downloadable viewer component has been updated and now includes a patch that fixes some issues that could lead to exception errors, instabilities, and crashes. There are still some other known issues, but v8.2 is now recommended over v8.1.9. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The viewer component has been updated. Two errors were fixed that caused the viewer component to freeze with certain corrupt GZ archives and certain SWF files. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
I have stumbled across a MS Word document that appears as blank when viewed with v8.2 of the viewer component in its Normal or Draft mode, but can be viewed successfully with v8.1.9 (any mode) or in Preview mode of v8.2. Not sure how likely this error occurs, but until this is fixed by Oracle, if you encounter a seemingly blank MS Word document with v8.2, I recommend you temporarily switch to Preview mode just to be sure (i.e. right-click the viewer component window and select View | Preview in the context menu), to avoid overlooking relevant content. The issue seems to be limited to MS Word documents where all contents are located in a single table. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The viewer component has been updated. The aforementioned issue with MS Word documents has been fixed. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The viewer component has been updated. v8.2 no longer freezes when viewing/processing certain HTML files that v8.1.9 had no problems with. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The viewer component has been updated. Text files of a very specific kind can now be viewed that previously caused an error message ("bad file"). It is usually not necessary to download the new viewer component version just because of this change. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A new version of the viewer component (v8.2.2) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics with update maintenance. The changes are: * support for JPEG 2000 * support for Windows 2008 Server * various patches and bug fixes Installing this update is recommended. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The viewer component has been updated. An error was fixed that previously caused the entire program (X-Ways Forensics) to become unstable when or after trying to decode the text in a certain PDF document for a keyword search. Installing this update is recommended if you use this functionality. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The viewer component has been updated. An error was fixed that previously caused the entire program (X-Ways Forensics) to crash when trying view or decode the text in a certain binary file. Installing this update is not urgent because this error was probably very rare to occur. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A new version of the viewer component (v8.3) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics with update maintenance. The changes are: * Open Office 2.x / Star Office 8.0 Calc enhancements * MS Office 2007 chart support (most chart types) * Support for AutoCAD 2007 * Enhancement of AutoCAD 2005 & 2006 beyond text only * JPEG2000 support extended * Other improvements and presumably error corrections. Installing this update is recommended. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A new version of the viewer component (v8.3.2) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics and X-Ways Investigator with update maintenance. The changes are: * IBM Lotus Symphony 1.2 (Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets) support * Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) support * PDF 1.7 support (except PDF Packages and PDF Portfolios) * IBM Lotus Notes DXL support * Microsoft PowerPoint 97-2003 "read-only" files supported * SmartArt supported as created by Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 Installing this update is recommended. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A new version of the viewer component (v8.3.5) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics and X-Ways Investigator with update maintenance. The relevant changes are: * Windows 7 is now an officially supported platform. * Improved rendering engine for vector drawings, presentations, and charts. * Some minor improvements. Installing this update is recommended, but not urgent. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
Please do not extract the new version of the viewer component over an old one. You may do that with WinHex or X-Ways Forensics, but not with the viewer component. Instead, extract it into a new, fresh, empty directory. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
The new version of the viewer component seems to be unable to find and highlight search hits in PDF documents. For that reason I have included a link to the previous version of the viewer component in download instructions again. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A new version of the viewer component (v8.3.7) is now available for download to licensed owners of X-Ways Forensics and X-Ways Investigator with update maintenance. The relevant changes are: * Improved rendering of PDF images with JBIG2, JPEG2000 compressions and with explicit masks. * Support for attachments in PDF files. * Other improvements for PDF. * Support for the file formats AutoCAD 2010, Microsoft Project 2010, and Ichitaro 2010. * Support for CMYK color spaces in JPEG files. * Numerous improvements for Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and more file formats. * Support for charts in Microsoft Office 2007 binary Excel files. This version can highlight search hits in PDF documents again. Installing this update is recommended! Please remember that you must not mix files from different versions of the viewer component in the same directory. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
As it turns out, the new version of the viewer component is not 100% compatible with previous versions of X-Ways Forensics. Opening e-mail attachments from within the e-mail view of the new version of the viewer component in a separate window (by clicking the links in the e-mail header) will only be supported in X-Ways Forensics 16.0 SR-12 and 16.1 SR-2 and later. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
As I was just made aware, the latest version of the viewer component has an error that occurs when it views files as hexadecimal (which is an option in the viewer component's context menu Options | Display | View unknown files as...) and the user scrolls in the viewer window. However, I still recommend the latest version of the viewer component. You can get a much better hexadecimal representation of a file from X-Ways Forensics itself, of course, either in File mode or if you open a file in a separate data window (and when I write "open" I mean the "Open" command literally, in the directory browser context menu), so as I see it there is no need to ever use this option. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
As I have just found out accidentally, the latest version of the viewer component (v8.3.7) as well as the previous version (v8.3.5), but not versions before that, are unable to view files (e.g. text files) that contain only 1 byte. As this is not a very important ability and as such files can just as well be viewed in File mode, I still recommend the latest version of the viewer component. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
A patch for the latest version of the viewer component (v8.3.7) was provided by Oracle. It does not fix the aforementioned errors, but some other ones: * Potential parsing fault with certain corrupt Corel Draw files. * WordPerfect file renders garbage characters. * Certain images in PDF source files that were previously rendered are not rendered. * Additional spaces introduced between characters in PDF source files upon export. * Opening multi-page documents in two threads causes performance degradation and rendering errors. v8.3.7 as downloadable from our web server now includes this patch. |