Your Best Pick For A Free Integrity Checker

I have to resort to old Windows 98 checkers like FINGERPRINT, AND INTEGRITY CHECKER by Sarah Dean for a couple, although she has a little better newer version but is still lacking in sustantial group supports, etc.

Old obsolete NIS FileChecker is slow as molasses and does not group by changes together but spreads them all over the place, plus you have to make databases because it's limited only to the entire C drive which is insane if you ask me. Thats why it's been long abandoned no doubt,

http://www.SDean12.org/

Does anyone know a good freeware integrity checker? I use FileChangeAlarm and had to use a hex editor XVI32 just to correct spelling mistakes and make it reasonably useable, but although it monitors changes in Real-Time, it's never been improved how it should have been for integrity checking IMO.

Thanks EASTER

 

Have you tried Hasher by Karens Power tools?
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/pthasher.asp

 

Thanks

Going there now. Downloading in Progress.

Any others feel free to post up any you use and feel is been helpful for you.

EASTER (on a mission again)

 

No Go

Didn't work.

Need a program to hash individual extensions and save to a database for comparison later.

Karen's doesn't allow that to work.

Nice App Though. Maybe i'll drop her a line and see if she can program something on that order. She is pretty good and been around a long time.

 

I use HashCalc:

http://www.slavasoft.com/hashcalc/

 

Hi EASTER,

Get ready! You will be happy!

And now download Crypto Helper 1.0: http://recovery-review.com/our-software/crypto-helper.html I have 1.13 MB on Program Files, = nothing ...

It is a FreewareWindows Explorer extension. You have two new context menu items: Get Sign, and Check for Sign. MD5, SHA1, CRC32.

Voilà!

Yours PROTOOTECT, by George

 

Easter check fileverifier++. It is the best hash generator/checker. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=225051

The advance processing can deliver what you want.

Panagiotis

 

Got it and it's good.

However, since Sarah Dean is also offered the source to her very useful Integrity Checker app, i'm going to dig way back in my abandoned programming skills and attempt to get it to try to start with Windows and access the earlier file hashes database and kind of make it to a compare right out of the gate automatically instead of the manual method you can only do now.

Thanks to all for your suggestions, i appreciate them all, what few we that have available free.

Would love to access the source for FileChangeAlarm because i done some editing with it this week and at least have an idea to improve it, if only i could get it to save to a HTML though instead of text file. Delphi programming is a art, and it,s been a long time since i dabble with Delphi projects, but their not so bad once you drive yourself head first in the code and stay there awhile.

EASTER

 

Hi Easter,

After all these years I'm still using NISFileCheck

NISFileCheck may be slow, but a full scan with some AV/AT/AS may also take some time (in particular in Safe Mode).

Maybe I'm not understanding you right; but if I do understand you right, then the following is not right in some way or another:
"does not group by changes together but spreads them all over the place, plus you have to make databases because it's limited only to the entire C drive".

The guidelines are still here in the archived forums (thanks much to LWM for archiving them!):
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=545

 

Lets first have a look at "does not group by changes together but spreads them all over the place".

Most definitely it has the option you're looking for.

Let's assume that you have let NFC check whether files in your database are changed (changed, deleted).
Let's say that there were changes.
Now there is a filter-option to look at the files you want.
I myself look first at the possibly deleted files.
After that I look at the changed files.

OK, let's say I want to look now at the changed files.
At the top of NFC you see several menu's.
Click on Filter, then on Only Changed Files.
You will now see only the changed files grouped together, as you wanted.
There are in red.
If you wish, you can go to the Menu Edit > Select All Records.
Then they are in blue

The screenshot shows an example which I just made.

PS:
I export all changes to text-files with the date on which I run NFC in the name.
The reason why you see for example several Spybot S&D files listed, is that I have manually included all its files.

 

You might want to export the selected files to a text file or CSV file (up to you).
If you did so, select them all again, validate them all, and check them all.

Then in the top menu set the Filter back to Filter Off.
So now all files in your database are showing again.
In the Edit Menu > Unselect all records

(using NFC right, you should now let it search whether there are new files added, but I skip this now)

You should now save your database.

 

Now about this:
"plus you have to make databases because it's limited only to the entire C drive".

Yes and no.
The impression which you are giving, that NFC can only check files in C, is wrong.
You can let it check all the drives (partitions) you want.
You can have only one database, and you can have several databases.
You can have one database for C and D (for example).
You can also have one database for C and another one for D.
It is up to you how you want to use NFC.

Go to:
Files > Add Files on extension
The screenshot shows you that you can add more than one drive (partition).

 

PS:
As I pointed out in the guidelines (well, I think I did), you have to be very carefully here (otherwise you may end up with files listed twice in the database).
If you have already a database for the files in C, and you want to add the files on D to that same database, then select only D in that screenshot, click Cancel, then go to Files > Search for new files (based on "Add files on extension").

 

Well, so far about NISFileCheck.

Another file-integrity-checker, which I use, is ADinf32 Pro (not free).
Somewhere here on the board is a review from me.

PS:
And yes, I do know about what Vesselin Bontchev wrote many years ago about these kind of apps!

 

Thanks FanJ

I read your archived instructions already and what prompted me to give it whirl. Everything you say works, albeit slow.

Try This and offer some feedback to it's usefulness or not.

I have an idea if i can reach Sarah Dean to improve her IC app even better.

I use Integrity Checker to do a complete DIRECTORY (any) scan by any extensions whatsoever, then save the results to it's .ic file which is the database file.

Now go to folder options and select File Types (IC) as New and have it opened with the program Integrity Checker. Make a shortcut of the .ic file and place it in your Start Up Folder.

Now, everytime Windows starts, Integrity Checker starts it's GUI with the ic database and begins an integrity check on it to show any hash/changes if any.

It,s a bit cumbersome to do it that way, but it works to perfection, and does take some time for it to recurse thru the DIRECTORY'S file extensions you've selected.

 

I recently went from using FingerPrint back to using NIS FileCheck again, mainly because I want version information of files. FingerPrint and NIS FileCheck take approximately the same time for the file set I scan.