HASH - based searches?
 

Can anyone please tell me whether it is possible to search for a file based on its HASH signature, and if so how to do it?

Thanks.

I don't know if it's possible to search thru LW.

You may be able to find a torrent with a particular hash sig. Check out bitzi.com.

LW will handle the torrent download (click "open" when dalog box appears) and the filename will appear in in the LW downloads window.

Thanks. What is a Torrent, please?

Torrents are another means to share files.
They are found at many, many sites. Do a little research.
You don't need a "torrent client" to get started. LW will handle it for you (though you will want to use a different program if you want more than a few torrents.)


Start LW.
Open your browser and go to isohunt.com (one of many good free torrent sites).
Search for what you want. When you find it, choose the file with the most seeds. Click "download this torrent" (will appear somewhere on the web page).
When dialog box appears, click 'open'.
Go back to LW. You should see your selected file in the downloads window.

I suggest you start with a small file, such as a song, to see how it works.

You may want to check out uTorrent. It's a bit sophisticated, but you can start with defuault settings. Since you already have LW installed, use it until you know what you're doing.

So have I got this right? The file I am looking for might be held within a torrent - and I might be able to identify such a torrent by using the HASH signatures of the file I am looking for?

Yeah, torrents have hash sigs. Follow the steps above to get a small file, just to make sure you've got that part right.

Next, you might try googling the hash sig. If that doesn't work, try bittorrent.com, or bitzi.com. I believe each will locate files by their hash sig.