checksum 1.3.6

At long last, the update you have been waiting for..

★ = you asked for it!
~ = change
* = fix

You thought the old version of checksum was the fastest hashing application in the world? Try this!

• ★ 64 and 32 bit versions now available.
  
  
• Significant increases in the hashing speeds in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions, thanks to the improved compilers (and compiler options) available today, as well as some code tweaks implemented during the 64-bit DLL update (now at v0.6). I have also switched out the SHA1 routines for something faster, for example..
  
  My DVD-sized "BIG.iso" test file used to MD5 hash (on my current system) in 24.3 seconds. Pretty fast. That time is now under 16 seconds both the 32 bit and 64 bit editions. A SHA1 hash of the same file used to take 41.8s. It now takes less than 24s. As they say, YMMV, but I am looking at speed increases of between 60% for MD5 and 79% for SHA1 <insert exclamation point>.
  
  Of course, the rate at which your system can get the data off your drive will always be the limiting factor. And though the latest checksum is tuned to deliver maximum disk data throughput, with 300MB/s hashing speeds, no current hard drive can keep up.
  
  SSD users, enjoy!
  
• ★ International file name handling on >= Windows 7; Russian, Japanese, whatever. This change is upstream, so I am keen to hear reports on it working or otherwise on YOUR system.
  
• ★ checksum can now optionally store a file's modification date and time along with the checksums, like so..
  
    #md5#Björk - Hunter.flac#2009.09.26@19.49:36
    fba7b0f424d3c217d312bcd84728ac8f *Björk - Hunter.flac
    #md5#Desirée.flac#2009.09.26@19.49:36
    00073fa1652f74961c1a9696afa7a992 *Desirée.flac
    #md5#info.nfo#2009.09.26@19.49:36
    5deee1f6ac75961d2f5b3cfc01bdb39c *info.nfo
  
  Thanks to the extra information, during verification checksum will report files with mismatched hashes as either "CHANGED" (they have been modified by some user/process) or "CORRUPT", where the modification timestamp is unchanged.
  
  These will show as a different color in your HTML logs (assuming you are using an updated master CSS file).
  
  You can also now choose whether or not to report (and log) missing, changed, or corrupted files. For example, if you only want to know about CORRUPT files, but don't care about changed or missing files, you
  would set..
  
  

  	report_missing=false
  	report_changed=false
  	report_corrupt=true

  
  As one commenter on the checksum page pointed out, with this sort of functionality, checksum would become "the only tool against silent data corruption". I believe this goal has now been achieved.
  
  The chosen algorithm is also stored along with this information, for possible future use (aye, more algorithms!).
  
• ★ checksum can now post its completion times in a more readable format, rather than using only seconds..
  
  readable_times=true
  
  This affects not only the message and ToolTip windoid displayed at the end of checksum operations, but the times shown in the logs (if you have that enabled).
  
• checksum will now check online for newer versions of itself. This is configurable in checksum.ini - you can set how many days to wait between checks. After installation, it will ask you one time about how regularly to check for new versions. If you want to change it after that, you will need to edit the ini. Feel free to check daily, my server can handle it!
  
• £★ Customizable preamble string (the comment at the top of the .hash file)
  
• £+ Customizable "licensed to" name in About Box.
  
• New software licensing model. From your side of things, the biggest change is that everyone now gets their own specific key. Also it's a lot easier to enter!
  
  There is a facility for existing Licensed users to upgrade their license key, here:
  
  https://corz.org/windows/software/checksum/upgrade.php
  
• setup now puts icons in the context menu on systems where this is possible. It also installs "Directory Background" menu items (the one you get when you right-click . This almost makes up for the loss of Windows 7 app menu functionality, at least for checksum!
  
• ★ Rudimentary queueing system. Rather than warn you about running multiple copies on the same disk, checksum now has the option to queue jobs. If checksum is already running and you launch a second copy (maybe by selecting multiple items in explorer and doing a checksum context command on them), it will add the job to a simple queue file which checksum checks on exit. If there are jobs there, it launches itself with the job, deletes it, and so on. It's nothing fancy, but it works.
  
  Note: if you do this sort of thing a lot, you will probably want to increase the long_operation time in your preferences.
  
• ~ checksum grudgingly now uses plain ANSI for regular .m3u files and enables users to select .m3u8, if required. It's a real pity "they" didn't just keep one extension, but certain music players will balk on UTF-8 .m3u files, so this has been added for maximum compatibility. pls files are still always UTF-8.
  
• ~ If you have the ToolTip disabled, left-clicking checksum's tray icon will show the Progress ToolTip, so you can see what's happening.
  
  Previously, left-clicking the tray icon performed no action.
  
• * Fixed an issue where if you had the ToolTip disabled on launch and then quickly enabled it while checksum was in the middle of a long operation (for example, gathering the hashes for a large folder) you would get a blank ToolTip (until the next ToolTip message was posted).
  
• * Fixed a minor issue where the one-shot verify options audio alerts setting would initially display the setting for the progress tip!
  
• * Fixed an issue where checksum would unhide previously hidden checksum files if checksum hiding was off in the prefs. Now it will leave them alone.
  
• ~ The keep_dll setting has been deprecated - now it just stays put in portable mode.
  
• ~ The binaries are no longer packed. Originally, it was fantastic, being able to fit the whole lot onto a floppy disk, but you have to ask yourself, "what the hell is a floppy disk?"
  
  

  simple checksum 0.8.4 [current release]

• ~ simple checksum will now strip any white space from hashes in the clipboard when comparing against dropped files. This is useful when the user has copied the hash from a web page with an extra space or line break at the end (usually unwittingly). It is also useful when comparing against hashes which have been presented "split", like so:
  
  1852 fd05 0afa 3693 2a00 2c4d 08b9 b37b
  
  Note: simple checksum will not alter the clipboard data in any way, it will simply remove all whitespace before comparing against the hash of the dropped file.
  
• simple checksum will now do automatic clipboard compare from initial launch. This is in addition to during all drag and drop operations. Basically, if there's a hash in the clipboard when you hash a file, via any route, simple checksum will attempt to compare the hashes.
  
  Alt-C gets you the actual hash, if required.
  
• A new option has therefore been added to the menu: "Clear the Clipboard".
  
• New About Box, more in line with checksum and my other apps (but there's no SysInfo, which would be too much duplication - you can get that from checksum if you really need it).
  
• simple checksum will now post an error message if your chosen (ini) editor could not be launched, as opposed to simply doing nothing.
  
• By request, I have added a switch to take you directly to the SysInfo box easter egg. That switch is "SysInfo" (no quotes). Enjoy!
  
• * Fixed a bug where simple checksum would continue, even in the absence of the hashing library. Now it will post its message and exit.
  
  

  setup:

• ~ There have also been a few improvements to the installer (setup) app. It is now 64-bit aware, as well as being better at cleaning up after itself (specifically, it will no longer leave an empty top folder in your app data folder after a complete uninstall).