3. Validating the Files

Errors can occur during the download, even if your download manager reports none. Therefore it is very important to check that the files have not been corrupted in any way. This is the purpose of the CHECKSUM file. It contains one line for each of the available ISO files with a content verification code called a hash computed from the original ISO files.

BitTorrent Automatic Error Checking

BitTorrent automatically performs this error checking during downloads. If your BitTorrent application reports all files have been successfully downloaded, you can safely skip this step.

Third-party software

The Fedora Project and Red Hat, Inc. have no control over external sites such as the ones listed in the sections below, or the programs they provide.

3.1. Validating in the Windows Graphical Environment

There are a number of no-cost products available for file validation and hashing that have point and click interfaces. Here are links to a few of them:

HashTab: http://beeblebrox.org/
Marxio File Checksum Verifier (FCV): http://www.marxio-tools.net/en/marxio-fcv.php
DivHasher: http://soft.mydiv.net/DivHasher.html

Follow the instructions provided to install the program. When you run the program, use the file selection tools provided to select your downloaded ISO image files. Then select the SHA256 algorithm for calculation, and run the tool. The program takes some time to complete, since it must read the entire ISO file.

Open the file CHECKSUM with a text editor, such as Notepad, to display its contents. Make sure the hash displayed by the hash tool for each of the downloaded ISO files exactly matches the corresponding hash in the CHECKSUM file.

If all of the hashes match, you can burn the ISO file to disc. If a file does not match, download it again.