few questions about 7 ultimate iso

I bought a legit copy but lost the 64bit disk and I have a rig I'm putting together right now. How can I tell if an iso download is a valid copy or is there a legit place to get it? Microsoft wants me to wait for a disk and I've got **** to do.

People say there is, but numbers can be faked and so when it comes to the operating system itself - I only use the retail DVD or ISOs directly downloaded from Microsoft MSDN or Microsoft TechNet, which require subscriptions.

Non-subscribers have no way of getting the ISO other than by contacting Microsoft like you did or using their friend's discs or ISOs.


Since all numbers can be faked - there is no way to know whether changes were made to the ISO. When I first saw people posting numbers accompanying downloads, directly suggesting that some sort of a signature can be used to verify an ISO - I asked if those numbers can be faked... and people said yes, so I didn't understand what the point was...

md5 hashes CAN be manufactured, but it's nothing easy to do.

Essentially an MD5 has is a fingerprint of a file, by putting it through an encryption algorithm.

it takes the whole file, and computes the hash value.

It's not impossible to manipulate two different files in such a way that they both have the same md5 hash, but it's not something simple.

For 99.9% security, borrow an OEM dvd.