rufus-3.3.exe, the latest version, is not working on my PC. Only rufus-2.18.exe and the versions before it seem to be working. I got this error message as shown at the bottom of the below screenshot:
Failed to download file.
I have downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu 18.10.
There is an official bug tracker for Rufus.
If you think you have an issue with the Rufus application, can you please report it there? Also, when you do, please make sure you provide the log(s) from Rufus.
For the record, I am the Rufus developer and, I am not seeing any download issue in Rufus (or reports of download issues) with the latest Ubuntu 18.10 ISO, so I strongly suspect the issue is with your environment. Especially, if your system's SSL libraries are not up to date (which is a common issue on Windows 7, less so on Windows 8 or later), you may not be able to download the files over HTTPS (whereas Rufus 2.18 downloads the files over HTTP).
Furthermore, considering that the HTTP URLs that Rufus 2.18 used to download files are no longer valid, I suspect that the reason why you find that Rufus 2.18 "works" is simply because you used that version before the HTTP download links were removed, and a copy of the required files still exist in the rufus_files\ folder you should see in the same location as the Rufus application. Either that or you chose to create the drive in GPT/UEFI mode in 2.18, in which cases the files don't need to be downloaded.
Either way, I'm afraid it's just impossible to address your issue unless your report it through the proper channels and provide a full log of what you did, so that we can see why the downloads failed.
Finally (as of 2023), please bear in mind that I have stopped supporting older versions of Windows, so if you want to receive support, please make sure that you run Rufus on Windows 10 or later.
The "Failed to download file." error is thrown when running an old version of Rufus. Rufus is regularly updated. Download the latest stable version of Rufus to fix the issue.
If the download feature in Rufus 3.5+ doesn't work, download the Ubuntu .iso file manually from the official ubuntu.com website, and then browse in Rufus to the Ubuntu .iso file that you downloaded instead of downloading it from Rufus.
In Ubuntu, there is a built-in terminal program named wget that allows the user to resume interrupted downloads from the same place where the download was interrupted without needing to download the whole file again from the beginning. There are also web browser extensions and download managers for Windows that have a resume interrupted downloads feature.
