Verify downloaded file integrity by file signatures MD5, SHA1 and CRC32

It is always a frustration when you download a EXE, ZIP or RAR file from internet that is particularly large and consumed lot of your bandwidth time only to find that it’s broken and won’t install or extract. This is particularly a concern of dial-up users and broad band users who use download managers that downloads multiple parts of the same file at the same time which are prone to break the downloaded file.

So, many websites and/or vendors who provide downloadable softwares include a digitally encrypted signature to identify the contents of the file at any time. All you need to do is just use the signature to verify the integrity of the downloaded file before you execute the same.

This also provides a fail-proof way of distributing original files and helps us to identify cracked or hacked ones from the original files. Even if a single bit changed in the original file, the signature verification will fail giving you a clear warning that the file you downloaded is not the same as it claims to be.

To give your own digitally encrypted file signatures and to verify file signatures of downloaded files, there exists a cool freeware utility called Crypto Helper which you can download from its official website here.