Validating downloads on Windows

From: Kenneth Porter (shiva_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-11-08 02:53:23

I thought I had a corrupted download and wanted to relate my experience on 
how to validate the zip file downloads on Windows.

The Boost archives (tar, zip, etc.) all have a matching small .json file 
that contains a SHA256 hash of the archive file. Under Windows 10, you can 
use certutil.exe from a command line to compute the hash for the archive 
and compare it to the value in the .json file:

C:\Users\ken\Downloads>certutil -hashfile boost_1_75_0_b1_rc1.zip SHA256
SHA256 hash of boost_1_75_0_b1_rc1.zip:
07ddca7c39ea9152bad73bee4f10f2c9c8e3a2d7e153aa945a343f83eca5db59
CertUtil: -hashfile command completed successfully.

(I thought my download was corrupted because I was using an ancient version 
(5.50) of InfoZip's unzip program and it was reporting errors. I updated to 
version 6 and it unpacked the same file just fine.)