Verify MD5 Hash of File on Windows (the quick way)

Hashing allows you to create a message digest of a file, essentially a summary of the file, so you can determine if that file has changed during transit. It has lots of purposes such as ensuring non-repudiation, but in this example I’m using the MD5 hash to verify that the file has been downloaded correctly.

An MD5 hash will always be the same for an identical copy of the file, you change even one bit of a file and the whole hash (message digest) will change completely.

So in this case I’ve downloaded the summitX-22.7.5.1.XOS file from Extreme Network’s website, they also provide the MD5 (and SHA-256) hashes of the file for verification.

So to verify the downloaded file I run the command in PowerShell:

Get-Filehash .\summitX-22.7.5.1.xos -Algorithm MD5

As you can see in the below, my hash computed for the file matches the MD5 (source) from the Extreme Networks website, so in this case the file was downloaded unchanged, i.e. it wasn’t corrupted in transit.

Of course you can do all sorts of things to make this an easier process, but this is the basics of what you need!