Safely transport .EXEs via thumbdrive (is here ok?)

[Col.Kell]

Hi, sorry if this is in the wrong place, but I'm having a serious problem.

On rare occasions when I go to my friends house on the north end of the state, I may often use thier DSL internet to download some huge installation executionables while I'm there.

What I do is download the .EXE to thier desktop, then after it's done downloading, I move it to my thumbdrive. Well, after copying the .EXE to my laptop from the thumbdrive when I get back home, I run it and often times they may be damaged or corrupt!

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP?!?

[Skyfaller]

Perhaps there is something with the thumb drive?

You could compute MD5 checksums for the file downloads. Check them on your friend's desktop, on your thumb drive, and after copying to your computer. Make sure you properly unmount the drive before unconnecting or disconnect after shutting down the computer. Some web pages include MD5 checksums for their downloads.

If your hex editor does not support MD5 checksums, use this.

[Col.Kell]

Everything seems to check out, I'm not sure what it could be.
Maybe packing the .EXE into a compressed file would work?

[-Myg]

The machine you are copying it from; Windows Xp or 2000?

[Col.Kell]

The computer at my friends house was XP, mine is also XP. But what would that have to do with anything?

[-Myg]

Windows 2000 has a nasty habit of causing corruptions with transfers to USB sticks.

[Col.Kell]

Well my point is, how can I protect .EXEs? Often times I have downloaded large executionables that came out corrupted. But I don't recall any damage done when they are ziped or compressed. Maybe that would work...