Repairing corrupt linux iso images [Solution to MD5 checksum errors]

A few days back my windows has crashed and I lost some data. This is not the first time, my system crashed several times and I lost my online banking details and other important information. I seriously gave a thought on whether windows is my only choice (That’s why I haven’t posted any article for 3 days. Sorry for that!) I decided to give linux a try and downloaded Mandriva iso image.  The size of the iso image is around 686MB. I am lucky because I recently shifted to a fast ADSL broadband from dialup, so the download was complete within an hour. After that I burned the image unto a disc and started installing Mandriva. The installation started and after sometime the installation freezed and the installation was failed. I tried decreasing the burning speed, still the burning process failed.

With other system I searched internet for possible failures of linux installation and the most common error was the MD5 checksum error. The dowloaded iso image was a corrupt one. Don’t know why it happened, because I have downloaded Mandriva from official mirror using DAP. The possible solution to fix this MD5 checksum errors is to delete the corrupt iso and download the whole iso image again. This is not a problem for guys on hi-speed internet, but for guys on dialup this can be a serious issue. Many don’t like spending another night downloading the whole iso image again. For such people here is a small trick to repair the corrupt iso file. Follow these steps :

1. Download and install a torrent client. I prefer utorrent as it is small.
2. Now go to mininova.org. Search for the linux iso image and download the torrent file. Make sure that the torrent you are downloading is same as that of the corrupt iso image you downloaded earlier.
3. Open torrent file with utorrent and tell utorrent to save the download to that folder where you have already saved the corrupt iso image. When utorrent asks you to replace the corrupt iso image, select Yes.
4. Let utorrent download the missing part of iso. After the download is complete you can use that iso to install linux.

Hurray! you’ve fixed the corrupt iso without spending another sleepless night.

Tip : Before burning linux iso to cd or dvd first check whether the downloaded iso is working or not. You can use virtualbox to make sure that iso image is not corrupt. For more information on how to install linux on virtual box see the tutorial by Justskins.

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