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Is there a built-in method for computing an SHA-1 or MD5 hash in Windows 7?

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marked as duplicate by Mokubai, Carl B, Nifle, Simon Sheehan, Siim K Sep 16 '13 at 17:47


superuser.com/questions/89191/… –  akira May 14 '11 at 9:04
I'd support incorporating sha1 into the title of the other question and closing this one –  George W Bush May 14 '11 at 16:51
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7 Answers

up vote 19 down vote accepted

There is no built-in utility, however Microsoft provides a command-line utility as a free download:

Availability and description of the File Checksum Integrity Verifier utility

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It's not exactly built-in, but at least you don't have to download any new software to make it work. You can create a powershell script to compute the MD5sum of files. The actual script can be found here:


Copy that text into a file called something like, "ps-md5sum.ps1" and save it somewhere. When you need to compute the hash of a file, open up PowerShell in the directory of the file you need to check, and then run it:

[PS] C:\> ps-md5sum.ps1 file-of-choice.exe

And it should return the hash of that file.

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This PS1 script from Joe Pruitt emulates the UNIX md5 behavior: devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/Joe/archive/2009/05/18/… –  Brian Reiter Jul 21 '10 at 22:52
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No built-in tools.

I use the HashCheck shell extension:

alt text

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This is my favorite because it's a kernel extension (dunno if they still use that terminology). Been using it for years. –  David Cowden Jun 5 '13 at 23:36
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There's nothing built-in. Might I suggest using HashTab?

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Again, nothing built in, so I use HashCalc.

HashCalc Screenshot

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Really great program –  TheLQ Jul 22 '10 at 2:03
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Arpoon Checksum is also nice, as it doesn't require installation

Arpoon Checksum - Main Screen

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In addition to all the great options already posted, there's also md5deep/hashdeep, an open source hash calculation suite for Windows (but can also be used in *nix and OS X systems) that supports:

  • MD5
  • SHA-1
  • SHA-256
  • Tiger
  • Whirlpool

Some advantages of md5deep/hashdeep:

  • It's open source and cross-platform.
  • It runs from the command-line and can be used for scripting.
  • It has optimized binaries for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
  • It supports modern hashing algorithms (MD5 and SHA-1 are both broken at this point for verifying file integrity and digital signatures since collisions can already be produced for MD5 with relative ease and SHA-1 collisions are increasingly within the realm of possibility).
  • It can recursively generate checksums for an entire directory.
  • It can test a file or directory against a previously generated list of checksums to perform a quick audit of the directory (identifying unknown files or files which have been altered).

To use it in Windows, you can either install it in Cygwin or you can just include the md5deep directory in your %PATH% variable. Though I personally prefer the following setup:

  1. Extract all files somewhere, e.g.


  2. Create a set of batch files in your windows directory, e.g.


  3. Include the path to the appropriate binaries, e.g.

    In md5.bat:
    "%ProgramW6432%\md5deep\md5deep64.exe" %* (64-bit systems)
    "%ProgramFiles%\md5deep\md5deep.exe" %* (32-bit systems)

    In hash.bat:
    "%ProgramW6432%\md5deep\hashdeep64.exe" %* (64-bit systems)
    "%ProgramFiles%\md5deep\hashdeep.exe" %* (32-bit systems)

Or if you want to automatically switch between the 32-bit and 64-bit binaries for WoW64, you can put the 32-bit binaries in %ProgramFiles(x86)% and the 64-bit ones in %ProgramW6432%, and then write your batch files like this:

SET cmd=hashdeep
IF "%ProgramFiles%" EQU "%ProgramW6432%" SET cmd=%cmd%64
"%ProgramFiles%\md5deep\%cmd%.exe" %*
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@N West: Sorry, that was incorrect. –  Lèse majesté Jul 2 '13 at 13:04
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