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The recent MD5 post reminded me that of course MD5 is not a cryptographically secure checksum - it can be spoofed. Especially, when getting files from untrusted sources an MD5 checksum is not a proof of a valid file. But it is a fast algorithm that can be used for your own storage and backup needs. A secure algorithm is the SHA256, which can be also calculated on Windows without any additional downloads. A quick sample batch file could look like this: @echo off echo. echo Running certutil... echo. certutil -hashfile [filepath] sha256 echo. echo Should be SHA256: echo BD708C0E71E75BD73C636A957451A0CC2C84D7E587AB8FC549141074EF01AF7D echo. pause A more detailed discussion of pros and cons follows below: MD5 (Message-Digest Algorithm 5) Pros: Speed and Low Overhead: Computes faster than SHA-256, making it lightweight for scanning massive drives or deduplicating huge ...

The longer a Windows machine is up and running being years into its lifetime the more frequent inconsistencies can occur. For such a reason modern deployments try to work with an image-based approach - pets vs cattle. If one has to stick on a legacy machine with the pet that is continuously updated the following might help resolve Windows Update issues: If Windows update repeatedly fails to update (e.g. hangs after Downloading 100% or gets stuck in the installation procedure) one can try to install that update "by hand": https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=<KB#> , e.g. https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=kb4589210 If that does not resolve the issue, one quick first step is to use the System File Checker tool: sfc /scannnow It might be necessary to wait a couple of minutes after system bootup, because in the beginning Windows might report a conflict with another process. That usually resolves itself af...