Article ID: 889768
Article Last Modified on 1/23/2007
APPLIES TO
- Customer Service and Support Information
INTRODUCTION
When you apply the hashing algorithm to an arbitrary amount of data, such as a binary file, the result is a hash or a message digest. This hash has a fixed size. MD5 is a hashing algorithm that creates a 128-bit hash value. SHA-1 is a hashing algorithm that creates a 160-bit hash value.
MORE INFORMATION
You can use the File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV) utility to compute the MD5 or SHA-1 cryptographic hash values of a file. For additional information about the File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV) utility, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
841290 Availability and description of the File Checksum Integrity Verifier utility
To compute the MD5 and the SHA-1 hash values for a file, type the following command at a command line:
FCIV -md5 -sha1 path\filename.ext
For example, to compute the MD5 and SHA-1 hash values for the Shdocvw.dll file in your %Systemroot%\System32 folder, type the following command:
FCIV -md5 -sha1 c:\windows\system32\shdocvw.dll
Additional query words: mathematical function
Keywords: kbhowto KB889768
