XYplorer Beta Club

XYplorer 28.20.0400, 64-bit version, Lifetime License Enterprise

Background: I have a custom column set I've been using for years that consists of MD5 and Full Path columns. I use it in conjunction with a saved Search, and I last used it on 2026-01-12. I can tell because I update the search date with every use so that it will find the files modified or created since the last time. I don't know for sure if that last successful use was with the 64 or 32 bit version, but I suspect it was the 32 bit based on the search date being 5 minutes before the time stamp of my xyplorer64_full_noinstall.rar file.

Problem: Once the search has finished, I right-click the MD5 column and choose Refresh Column. Well, this morning, it completes immediately without computing any hashes, and "refreshing column done" appears just below the search pane, on the right. I can click on any of the "Play" buttons in the column to compute the hash for that file, but when I Refresh Column, it erases those results and displays the "done" message.

Any ideas?

Any ideas?

Post the hash column snippet?

This is the contents of my hashes.txt file that defines the column set. I don't know how it works, but what it produces is two visible columns, MD5 and Full Path, in that order.

I want to see the custom column setup, not the list of columns you're using...

Right-click on the "Clear" button to get the context menu!

Snip: CustomColumn 1
XYplorer 28.20.0400, 3/6/2026 2:08:11 PM
Action
ConfigureColumn
Caption

Type
1
Definition
hash.md5
Format
0
Trigger
2
Item Type
0
Item Filter

Can't replicate (and don't get confused by the cc caption^^)...

I couldn't repro it either in Windows Sandbox, and weirdly, on my real system, SHA-1 worked while MD5 did not. It didn't matter if I loaded my Column Set or created a new column. I made a backup of the Data folder and copied the XYplorer.ini from the sandbox to the real system, and lo and behold, MD5 columns are working again. Any idea what to look for? The files are 112 KB and 152 KB and have thousands of differences in WinMerge.

If it's working again on the real system, why bother?

It's not working on the real system with the real system's XYplorer.ini, which contains customizations I don't want to have to recreate.

Send the real, non–working version via pm…

I figured out a workaround.

My existing Custom Column for MD5, the one that suddenly does NOT work, was defined like this under [CustomColumns]:
My existing Custom Column for SHA1, which DOES still work, was defined like this under [CustomColumns]:
They look identical except for the column numbers and Definitions, so I tried swapping the "hash" types. I found that "hash.sha1" does NOT work as Definition10, while "hash.md5" DOES work as Definition15. So something is going wrong with Custom Column 10.

To get to the solution, in my hashes.txt file, I simply changed the "+:d-10.228" bit which referred to Custom Column 10, to "+:d-15.228", to make it refer to Custom Column 15, the new MD5 one. Problem averted.

There are also UI differences between the column context menus. When I right-click on the bad Column 10, I get:
OTOH, when I right-click on the good Column 15, I get:
Note the differences in the context menus. I cannot explain that.

The first 10 CC are treated like the other "hard" columns (Name, Size, ...) in some ways, e.g. they cannot be removed but just hidden.

I'll look into your refresh issue.

Should be fixed in next beta.

Thanks. I couldn't tell you how I ended up using #10. Looking at the creation dates of the folders where I save my hashes, I set this up in 2014(!)

Was this a new bug for you? From the code POV, it didn't look new, but probably from around 2022.