Checksum Validator Icon   Validating Checksums for Files
 

There are two ways to validate a checksum, manually and automatically. Both require that you first calculate the checksum for the file you wish to validate first. See here for more information on how to calculate a checksum.

To validate manually, merely look at the calculated checksum displayed by Checksum Validator and compare character by character with what is printed on the website where you downloaded the file. Note that with checksums the case of the letters (a-f, which are really numbers in this case since this is hexadecimal) does not matter. Since it is easy to make a mistake comparing seemingly random strings, let Checksum Validator do it for you:
  1. Go to the website where you downloaded the file and copy the checksum shown there in your browser.
  2. Go to the window in Checksum Validator that is showing the checksum calculated from your downloaded copy of the file.
  3. Paste the checksum into the text input field that is there. Hit return or enter on your keyboard.
  4. Immediately Checksum Validator will compare the two and show the results at the bottom of the window.

When validating make sure that the window is showing the proper digest. Obviously a MD5 checksum is never going to match a SHA-1 checksum!

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