How to calculate MD5/SHA1/SHA256 checksums of a file without an external tool
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Ok, I've done the required changes... now show me your content!Checksum is the easiest way to check if the content of a file is as it was expected to be or was changed/broken after a file transfer or an internet download.
A lot of websites (like CoolSoft) show the expected MD5/SHA1/SHA256 checksums beside each download link, so users can check "download health" after it completes.
After downloading a file you must calculate its checksum and compare it with the one reported beside the file; if they are the same (you could also check only the first/last 8 chars) then you can be sure that the downloaded file is not corrupted.
There's a lot of free utilities available to calculate the checksum of a file, but you could also do it with a tool already bundled in your Windows installation: certutil.
- open Windows Explorer (Win+E) and go to the folder containing the downloaded file
- while pressing the SHIFT key right click on an empty space into the folder
- now choose "Open Powershell window here..." or "Open command prompt here"
- a command prompt will open into the selected folder
- now finally run certutil and make it calculate the required checksum (replace filename.exe with the filename you're going to check):
PS C:\testFolder> certutil -hashfile filename.exe MD5 MD5 hash of filename.exe: 2ffefb74864d962ef9fabde17031a4e7
PS C:\testFolder> certutil -hashfile filename.exe SHA1 SHA1 hash of filename.exe: ade2405a022628835feac342c642a9113f630271
PS C:\testFolder> certutil -hashfile filename.exe SHA256 SHA256 hash of filename.exe: 4cc28a5be8dc7425a4c4fd23a75ca392f18be35d70232e777dce6d9f3b4d79ac
Supported checksums are: MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384 and SHA512.
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