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Download individual Microsoft Windows files (exe, dll, sys) from Microsoft with Winbindex

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 23, 2020
Windows, Windows 10
|
6

Winbindex is a new web service designed to provide users with options to download (some) binary files in different versions from Microsoft servers. The service focuses on some file types, e.g. .exe, .dll, and .sys files, and Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system.

The developer of the web service explains his motivation for creating the service in a blog post. He needed to track down a bug in a driver for a research project, and needed to get the driver file from various platform releases to find the version the fix was introduced in.

While it would have been possible to install a RTM version of Windows 10, turn off updates, install all updates manually, and check each version of the driver for the fix, it would mean a lot of work. He discovered another method that worked automatically.

Without going into too many details, he uses hashes provided by the manifest file of update packages, uses the hash to retrieve file information from Virustotal to find the location of the file on the Microsoft Symbol Server.

Usage is thankfully less complicated. Just point a web browser to the main Winbindex address to get started.

winbindex-download binaries microsoft

Type the name of a file or use the file browser by clicking in the text field on the page. The file browser lists thousands of files that the index supports.

Activate the "show" button once you have made your selection to get the list of available file versions. The results page that opens lists the Sha256 hash of each file, the Windows 10 version it was included in, and the update that it was included in. For some, it also shows the architecture.

You can filter results by Windows 10 version, update, or architecture. Click on a file that you are interested in and then the "show" button to display the manifest file, or the download button to download it to the local system.

download windows files

There is one caveat: files can only be downloaded if the file has been uploaded to Virustotal previously. The download button is inactive if that is not the case. The developer checked file availability and found out that 108K files out of 134K files were indexed by Virustotal.

The index could be improved in several ways in the future according to the developer. He notes that he has no immediate plans to add new features to the index but potential options include adding more architectures and operating systems, e.g. Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, indexing files from Windows base builds, and indexing files that are not available on Virustotal.

Closing Words

The service provides Windows 10 administrators and users with options to download specific Windows files from Microsoft servers. It may be useful to replace files that have been deleted by accident, as part of corruption, or to restore an earlier version of a file if a newer file is problematic.

Now You: What is your take on Winbindex? (via Deskmodder)

Summary
Download individual Microsoft Windows files (exe, dll, sys) from Microsoft with Winbindex
Article Name
Download individual Microsoft Windows files (exe, dll, sys) from Microsoft with Winbindex
Description
Winbindex is a new web service designed to provide users with options to download (some) binary files in different versions from Microsoft servers.
Author
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. owl said on July 24, 2020 at 1:49 am
    Reply

    More practical choices are welcome.
    This topic is valuable.
    Thanks to “ghacks”.

  2. Anonymous said on July 23, 2020 at 10:41 pm
    Reply

    This will help security experts and letter agencies greatly, but not so much for pretty much everybody else. Thank you.

  3. Yuliya said on July 23, 2020 at 3:09 pm
    Reply

    Would rather create a VM in a RAM disk (to speed things up and avoid SSD wear) and extract the file I need by myself.

    1. svim said on July 24, 2020 at 1:18 am
      Reply

      …. or have all the ‘heavy lifting’ part done for you, just download a needed file as provided. That’s appears to be a primary advantage as to why its developer created this service, and why ghacks has graciously made a posting about it.
      Thank Martin, this has been added to my bookmarks for when I’ll need it.

      1. Yuliya said on July 24, 2020 at 2:28 am
        Reply

        i.imgur.com/VWmW9UQ.png

        Name: win32calc.exe
        Size: 697856 bytes (681 KiB)
        CRC32: E7E11628
        CRC64: BE953511799C50E5
        SHA256: 3E2300394C15B59A964EAB45D9EB96D317650E2F7448FD1B4AE825A134402B7A
        SHA1: EC73FCAB989C8D525FE3BBCC3736BC3E6192A112
        BLAKE2sp: FF436A7C119C1204F22C455FC9A60DF636FEA4C5569D02584D84148ED9EBC2A9

    2. Anonymous said on July 23, 2020 at 11:46 pm
      Reply

      How to create a VM in RAM?

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