HexToolkit

This is a very useful hex viewer/editor which can view any file and has some handy features which make it easier to reverse engineer binary file formats. I regularly use it myself to reverse engineer a variety of GIS and Geophysics file formats. If you'd like me to reverse engineer a file format for you, or similar work, please email me.

Screen capture of HexToolkit 2.19 (May 2010)

Features

Works easily with large binary files of any size since only the viewed page of data is loaded.
Since the file is only accessed when loading or saving a page of data, the file is not locked.
String/byte search (string search is not case sensitive).
Goto file offset and increment/decrement by fixed amount.
Change the number of bytes per display line to make it easier to see patterns in the file.
Swap data display to show ASCII or EBCDIC characters, integers, floats, doubles, or binary.
Reload the displayed data with a single button press (changed bytes are highlighted in red).
Bytes-to-value conversion tool (integer, float, double, characters, binary, date/time) with optional byte swap. (Use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy bytes and paste them into this tool).
Built-in expression calculator (mixed hex/decimal supported) with numeric (+,-,/,*) and bit-wise operators (>>, <<, &, |, ^).
When you click on byte in the data window, the offset in the file is shown on the status bar.
Ability to write edited page of data back to the file.
Ability to export a hex dump using your chosen layout to a text file.
The ability to compare two binary files side-by-side.
A popup field layout tool which can generate C structs (Accessible from the View menu).
Ability to create a new binary file and initialise it with a specified byte pattern.
Ability to insert, delete, or set bytes at specified location in file (from File menu).
Ability to enter ASCII characters directly into the hex data using notation like 'A 'B 'C
Can be added to your "Send To" menu to allow easy opening of files from Windows Explorer (See below).
Works with Windows XP, Vista, and 7. (Version 1.7 works on Windows 2000 and Windows 98 too)

For a diagram of these features click here

You can leave feedback or discussion on the HexToolkit forum. I also report updates here.

Download HexToolkit here

Suggestion: Using Windows explorer browse to C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\SendTo (where xxx is your username) and right-click to add a new shortcut. Set the shortcut to point to HexToolkit.exe. Now whenever you're browsing and you want to view a file in HexToolkit, just right-click on the file and choose SendTo -> HexToolkit. Click here for a picture of how this works.

For my notes and tips on the reverse engineering process click here.

If you have any suggestions or feedback you can email me here.

See also, my hd and binary sieve tools.

Feedback

"Very good tool. Unique in hex editors.", T.Wells, USA (2009)

Vistors since March 2007:

Back to main software page